Category: Baseball

Arizona Diamondbacks (85-74) at San Diego Padres (89-70), September 25, 2026, 6:40 p.m. PST

Watch: Padres.TV

Location: Petco Park – San Diego, Calif.

Listen: 97.3 The Fan

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The Cubs came to Boston Friday hoping they could win a couple of games and maybe still get home games next week in the Wild Card Series.

Instead, after losing the doubleheader nightcap 2-0 to the Red Sox, there’s a mathematical chance they could be dumped into the third wild card spot and wind up facing the Braves in Atlanta

This time, the Cubs went just 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position — but that’s because they didn’t really have many RISP. All the Cubs’ seven hits on the night were singles. The top run-scoring offense in MLB has looked almost completely impotent over the last five games, scoring a total of nine runs, losing four of them.

This, obviously, is not good.

Let’s take a look back.

The Cubs didn’t have anyone past first base until the top of the fifth. In that inning, Nico Hoerner led off with a single and two outs later, Matt Shaw singled Nico to third. But that was that when Pete Cros-Armstrong grounded out.

Meanwhile, David Peterson was throwing well over the first five innings. He got some defensive help from Shaw in the fourth [VIDEO].

Peterson threw five innings, allowed three hits and two walks, and struck out six. Here’s more on Peterson’s evening [VIDEO].

More on Peterson from BCB’s JohnW53:

David Peterson went into Friday’s game having pitched 61 innings since the All-Star Game break, with a 2.95 ERA. That tied him with Sonny Gray for 20th best since then. With his five shutout innings Friday, his ERA is down to 2.73.

I would not hesitate to start Peterson in a Wild Card game, especially if it’s against the Phillies (though that’s looking unlikely, more on that coming).

Javier Assad took over from Peterson and threw two very good innings, the sixth and seventh, while the Cubs offense remained moribund.

Then Assad got in trouble in the bottom of the eighth with a leadoff walk. One out later (and after the Cubs unsuccessfully challenged that Connor Wong didn’t re-touch second on a fly to right), Assad was replaced by Ryan Rolison. Rolison struck out Roman Anthony, but then issued a walk to Jahmai Jones.

And then Wilyer Abreu doubled off the Green Monster and both runners scored, and you just knew that was going to be it for the Cubs, who went down 1-2-3 in the ninth.

“Sad” facts, as John called them in his message to me:

The Cubs have tallied nine runs runs in their five games. They have scored in only seven of their last 51 innings, starting with the sixth last Sunday at Cincinnati.
…
The Cubs had been shut out by the Red Sox in only one of their previous 28 regular-season games, by 17-0 at Boston on April 27, 2024. They also were blanked, 1-0, in Game 1 of the 1918 World Series, played at Comiskey Park on Sept. 5, 1918. The pitcher for the Red Sox was Babe Ruth.

So everyone’s now off to Florida to play the third game of this series Sunday afternoon. In the meantime, here are the permutations for the Cubs.

The Cubs are 88-73. The best record they can finish with is 89-73, obviously.

If the Cubs are 89-73, the Phillies would have to get to 90-72 (sweep the Rays) to finish ahead of them. The Padres have to go only 2-1 to finish ahead of the Cubs. If both of those teams do that, the Cubs would play the Braves. That could also happen if the Cubs lose Sunday. Then the Phillies would have to go 2-1 and the Padres just 1-2 to finish ahead of the Cubs.

So we’re still kind of in a holding pattern to see who the Cubs will be playing, and where. At this point, the only way the Cubs could still play at home is if they win Sunday and the Padres get swept and the Phillies win no more than two of their three against the Rays. So yes… I’m saying there’s still a chance.

The Cubs will have a rare Saturday off. Their flight to Florida is supposed to arrive well after midnight tonight and they and the Red Sox will both rest up before they play Sunday afternoon at 2:05 p.m. CT at Tropicana Field, televised on Marquee Sports Network. Please stick around BCB on Saturday, as we’ll have plenty here, including a game thread that will post at 5 p.m. CT so you can follow along with the Phillies and Padres games, which start at 6:15 p.m. CT and 8:40 p.m. CT, respectively.

At this time we don’t know who will start for the Cubs on Sunday. It could be Shōta Imanaga, it could be some kind of modified bullpen game… as always, we await developments. The Red Sox, whose postseason series against the Yankees is locked in, are likely to also use some sort of bullpen game on Sunday.

Hopefully the Cubs bats show up in Florida. They’ve been absent in Chicago and Boston all week.

With a nor'easter forecasted to hit the area, the Washington Nationals announced that the start time for Saturday's matchup with the Mets has been moved up.

Originally scheduled for 4:05 p.m., the new first pitch is now set for 12:35 p.m. as a precautionary measure.

Jonah Tong (2-2, 4.21 ERA) is scheduled to make his final regular season start against Connelly Early (7-5, 3.44 ERA). 

It's unclear whether Sunday's season finale will also be affected by the weather, but for now, that game is set for 3:05 p.m.

This final series between NL East foes is important in terms of draft positioning. The Mets entered the weekend set two games behind Washington in the standings. A Mets sweep will allow New York to avoid the basement of the division, but also give them a lower pick in the upcoming MLB Draft.

Brayan Bello gave Boston four innings and handed it to rookie Jedixson Páez, who turned around and gave them five more. Combined: nine innings, seven hits, zero Cubs runs—nine innings they were lucky to get in, with the rain circling Fenway all afternoon.

David Peterson matched Bello through five for Chicago. Neither team did much with what they had. The Cubs were making contact. They were just finding gloves.

Then came the eighth. Peterson was gone, Javier Assad got yanked, Ryan Rollison was in, and Wilyer Abreu doubled to right to score two. Assad took the loss.

Final: Red Sox 2, Cubs 0.

The Sox came into this doubleheader wanting to keep the bullpen from taking a beating before the final regular season game. Páez going five innings as a rookie—quietly one of the better pitching performances of the day—was exactly the kind of thing they needed. They sweep the Cubs and head to Tropicana Field to finish the 2026 regular season out.

Studs

Jedixson Páez — Five innings. Zero runs. He came in after Bello in the fifth and just kept going—through a Cubs lineup with its own playoff stakes, through whatever the weather was doing, through the innings where any mistake ends a shutout. The rookie threw the longest outing of the two-man combo and walked away clean. That’s the headline here. Beyond impressive for a spot call-up.

Brayan Bello — Four solid innings to set the table. He’s been one of the better starters in the AL since August and this was him doing his job—keeping the game zero when it needed to stay zero, letting Páez take it from there. Honestly starter Bello is acquiring reliever Bello’s powers and I trust him a little more.

Wilyer Abreu — Three hours of scoreless baseball, and when the game finally broke open, it broke on his bat. Two runs, eighth inning, that was the whole night.

Duds

The Red Sox offense — Four hits in nine innings. They won really because Wilyer’s double was the whole ballgame, and the timing couldn’t have been better. But two runs against a team they’ll never see again isn’t exactly what you want to carry into a playoff series at Yankee Stadium. They’ll need more than that next week.

Play of the Game

Wilyer’s double in the eighth. Three hours of scoreless baseball, a rookie pitcher on the mound, rain somewhere overhead—Abreu stepped in and ended the whole thing with one swing.

Shota Imanaga doesn’t need anyone else’s help celebrating.

The Cubs pitcher went viral after repeatedly blasting himself in the face with beer during the team’s wild clubhouse celebration after clinching a spot in the postseason Thursday.

Naturally, Imanaga had an explanation for the madness.

“This is Japanese style,” Imanaga said while holding a bottle in each hand. “Japanese misogi.”

Imanaga then turned both bottles toward himself and sprayed the beer directly onto his head and face, bobbing up and down into the streams as his teammates laughed around him.

“Self-service!” Imanaga said.

The Cubs leaned into the moment themselves, posting the video on social media captioned: “Who needs bottle service when you have self-service?”

During an interview with Marquee Sports Network’s Taylor McGregor amid the clubhouse celebration, Imanaga was showered with champagne by his teammates.

His response?

“Yummy!”

Chicago officially punched its postseason ticket with a 2-1 victory over the Marlins at Wrigley Field, securing a playoff berth for the second consecutive season.

Seiya Suzuki tied the game with his 26th home run of the season in the fifth inning before Nico Hoerner drove home Ian Happ for the eventual winning run in the sixth.

Pete Crow-Armstrong also stole his 40th base of the season in the victory, giving him 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases and making him just the seventh player in MLB history to accomplish the feat.

Imanaga has played his part in getting Chicago back to the playoffs for the second consecutive season.

The 33-year-old left-hander went 11-10 with a 3.74 ERA while remaining a fixture in Chicago’s starting rotation throughout the season.

He also recorded 171 strikeouts in 173 ⅓ innings pitched in 2026.

Last year, the Cubs went 92-70 and took care of the Padres in the wild-card round before falling to the Brewers in five games in the NLDS.  

Imanaga, who was an All-Star two seasons ago, turned 33 earlier this month and has a career 3.44 ERA and a 35-21 record.

The long-shot chance of Fernando Cruz pitching again this season is now shot.

The Yankees transferred Cruz to the 60-day injured list on Friday, essentially ruling him out for the entire postseason after the reliever was trying to make a comeback from a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament.

Cruz said earlier this week he was “100 percent” ruling out surgery at this point, and hoped to become an option in the coming weeks if the Yankees advanced.

He was slated to throw a second bullpen session on Thursday, though it remains to be seen whether he will just shut it down now that his season is all but over.

The 36-year-old journeyman had emerged as an important part of the Yankees bullpen over the last two seasons, though he became less effective this summer as he tried to pitch through his elbow issues before finally getting imaging in late August that revealed the partial tear in the ligament that usually leads to Tommy John surgery.

“I’m not going to accept that — I’m not going to say I have a partial tear,” Cruz said on Wednesday. “I’m not going to accept it. I had real good inflammation, real stiffness and irritation. People can say it’s a partial tear, but in my heart, it’s not a partial tear. 

“I’m gonna go through it. I’m gonna beat this.”

The Yankees transferred Cruz to the 60-day IL to open a spot on the 40-man roster for Alexander Cornielle, whom they promoted to eat innings in Friday’s doubleheader nightcap.

Getting this thread up an hour earlier than normal, so we can use it follow along the Rays-Phillies game which, of course, is key to proceedings here. The Philadelphia magic number is two, meaning that if the Rays sweep them, we can afford one loss. Or if we sweep San Diego, we can afford the Phillies to win one. I think I’ve got that right. Card subject to change, as they say. Right now, that game is in the fifth inning, and the Rays are 2-0 up, which is good. There’s no doubt the pressure will currently all be on the Phillies, and if results today go as we hope, that is only going to increase over the remainder of the weekend.

Roster moves

The Arizona Diamondbacks made the following roster moves. The D-backs’ active roster is at 28 and the 40-man roster is at 40.

• Recalled from Triple-A Reno: RHP José Cabrera
• Placed on the 15-day injured list: RHP Corbin Burnes (right shoulder inflammation; retro to Sept. 22)

There’s no doubt that Burnes’s results since coming off the IL had not been what we hoped to see. The bar for an improvement was quite low, but a 7.84 ERA across 10.1 innings was below even that. While I’m sure there is enough legitimate cause for concern to pass the scrutiny of MLB’s physicians, it’s certainly true that the D-backs could not afford any implosions with their post-season hopes so slim. Though they had won all three of Corbin’s outings, it was very much a case of “despite” not “because”, the offense averaging seven runs per game. It looks likely to be a bullpen game tomorrow, so hope Brandon Pfaadt can give us six frames or more tonight.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it, even though it causes Twidiots’ heads to explode. The current landscape is so utterly skewed towards the Dodgers, with revenue 50% more than any other team in the division, and 129% more than the D-backs. This is “competitive balance”, according to Manfred. In reality, it’s no surprise they’ll have won the last five divisions in a row, by an average of eleven games, if the current standings hold. Under those circumstances, all the D-backs can realistically hope for, is to compete for a wild-card spot. And here we are, 160 games in and still competing for a wild-card spot. Can’t ask for more than that.

The final weekend of this season is all about Justin Verlander, celebrating the final bow of one of Detroit’s greatest players of all time and a sure-thing first-ballot Hall of Famer. On Friday, ahead of the Tigers’ game against the Pirates, Verlander was surrounded by family, friends, and former teammates to kick the weekend off. He gave a touching speech, and then his daughter Genevieve threw out the ceremonial first pitch of the game.

Genevieve, only eight years old, seems to have taken a few pointers from her proud papa, because she stood confidently on the pitching mound and threw out a perfect first pitch, something we’ve seen fully grown adults falter on time and time again. You’d expect no less from the daughter of a superstar pitcher, but she also did it in style, sporting some boots that probably might not be advisable for most pros, but she made it look easy. Don’t think even JV himself could have done that well in a skirt and ankle boots.

Verlander spoke to the press about helping Genevieve prepare for her big moment.

When even folks on Twitter are hyping her up, you know she did a great job.

Congrats to Justin and Genevieve Verlander for the perfect moment to celebrate the start of JV’s farewell weekend. And who knows, maybe we’ll see GV again at a future WPBL draft.

CC Sabathia could laugh about it Friday because of everything that followed the decision. 

The World Series title in 2009. The three All-Star Game appearances. His 132 victories, 3.81 ERA and 1,700 strikeouts in pinstripes in 11 seasons. 

But before he decided to join the Yankees, Sabathia was intimidated by New York City. He saw other players come here and get swallowed up by the pressure of the big city. 

Then, he let general manager Brian Cashman into his home. 

“We had the initial meeting at the winter meetings in Las Vegas. I wasn’t convinced, I was still looking for other options,” Sabathia, a first-ballot Hall of Famer in 2025, who received 86.8 percent of the vote, recalled. “I flew home that night. ‘Cash’ came to my house that night. He sat down on the couch with me and Amber. He was like, ‘I’ve waited three years. There were other guys I could’ve signed but I didn’t sign because I was targeting you to come here. I know you can change my clubhouse, I know you can change the structure of the way this team is.’ … That conversation was the reason I ended up signing.” 

Clearly, it was a very good decision.

Sabathia helped lead the Yankees to their 27th and most recent title, and became a favorite of teammates and fans alike. 

On Friday, his No. 52 jersey was retired. When he arrived in The Bronx in 2009, the big left-hander couldn’t have imagined joining all the great Yankees in Monument Park. He had been part of these ceremonies before, but this was obviously different. 

“That ceremony was incredible, surreal,” Sabathia, 46, said. “I was saying out there I have so many famous teammates whether it’s Mo [Mariano Rivera], Derek [Jeter], Andy [Pettitte]. So I’ve been at the ceremony a bunch of times but to have that ceremony be for me is special and to have my family out there was cool.” 

Sabathia was joined by his wife Amber, mother Margie and two of his children. The ceremony included video messages from Jorge Posada, Paul O’Neill, Bernie Williams and former Yankees manager Joe Girardi. Teammates Jeter, Dellin Betances, Pettitte and Chris Young were a part of the festivities. 

Sabathia was presented with a blue blazer, a framed version of his plaque and retired number, along with a ring commemorating his career. 

He threw out the ceremonial first pitch to son Carsten, a first baseman in the Brewers minor league system, after becoming the fifth member of the 2009 World series champions to have his number retired by the Yankees. The others are Jeter, Pettitte, Rivera and Jorge Posada. 

“I never envisioned myself going into Monument Park and I think that was the reason why I was so scared to come here is because you don’t ever think you’re going to win the Yankee fans over or the city over,” Sabathia said. “So to be able to be sitting here now, playing here 11 years, is an incredible feeling and that’s why I’ve said the last couple of weeks this feels bigger to me than the Hall of Fame because I know what was at stake when I came here.”

After CC Sabathia’s No. 52 retirement ceremony and a rather forgettable Game 1 of Friday’s doubleheader, the New York Yankees will take the field again and face the Baltimore Orioles in the nightcap. The Bombers already know that they will host the Boston Red Sox in the Wild Card round, and the O’s are already eliminated from playoff contention.

As a result, this is merely a tune-up game for New York, but that’s certainly not insignificant ahead of another edition of their rivalry with the Sox. Brandon Young will take the ball for Baltimore, trying to wrap up a solid year. The 28-year-old followed up his mediocre 57.2-inning cameo last year with a very solid campaign in 2026, with 151.2 frames of a 3.62 ERA, a 4.53 FIP, and 127 punchouts. He is not a star, but did more than enough to win a long-term spot on the O’s staff.

The Yankees, with that series against their bitter rivals looming, didn’t announce their starting pitcher for Game 2 of the doubleheader until just about 10 minutes ago. Long reliever Ryan Yarbrough gets the nod for his second start of the season; he last pitched on Tuesday. His only other start of 2026 was the second game of another doubleheader against the Dodgers, when he went 2.2 shutout innings back on July 19th.

Yarbrough is obviously not built up length-wise to go deep in this one either, but the expectation is that Will Warren will pitch a couple innings as preparation for the playoffs. He last pitched on Sunday in Arizona. Big things were expected from Warren this season, and while he didn’t exactly develop into an ace, he has been steady as a rock with a 4.02 ERA in 152.1 innings. A team would take that from its No. 5 starter any day of the week. David Bednar, Brent Headrick, and Paul Blackburn can only pitch so much, so Warren could certainly make a positive impact in the ‘pen.

Also keep an eye on the bullpen for Alexander Cornielle. A career minor-league signed before the season, the right-hander made 16 starts for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and was activated to the big-league roster between games with matinee starter Brendan Beck optioned. If he appears tonight or Sunday, it will be his MLB debut.

From this point forward, everything the Yankees do on the field will be with the Red Sox in mind, so don’t expect an all-out effort from those expected to be on the Wild Card Series roster. Indeed, there isn’t a ton of overlap between the Game 1 lineup and the Game 2 starting nine, as the Yankees are avoiding using too many players if possible. Indeed, the Game 1 infield went Paul Goldschmidt/José Caballero/George Lombard Jr./Anthony Volpe from first to third, and Game 2 has Luis García Jr./Jazz Chisholm Jr./Volpe/Ryan McMahon, with Volpe giving Lombard a spell by shifting over to his familiar six for the first time since his early-August demotion. Cody Bellinger tags in for Heliot Ramos in left, while Ramos shifts to right and Amed Rosario takes a seat. Austin Wells will catch and Spencer Jones is the only one starting the same position in both games, in center.

How to watch

Location: Yankee Stadium – Bronx, NY

First pitch: 7:30 p.m. ET

TV broadcast: YES, MASN

Radio broadcast: WFAN 660/101.9 FM, WADO 1280

Streaming: Gotham Sports App, MLB.tv (out-of-market only)

For updates, follow us on BlueSky, Twitter, and Instagram, and like us on Facebook.

The St. Louis Cardinals begin the final series of their season Friday night in Milwaukee as Michael McGreevy is the scheduled starter. The Brewers will send Robert Gasser to the mound. First pitch is scheduled for 6:40pm at American Family Field and the game broadcast will be handled by Cardinals.tv.

1. JJ Wetherholt (L) 2B
2. Iván Herrera (R) DH
3. Jordan Walker (R) RF
4. Leo Bernal (S) 1B
5. José Fermín (R) LF
6. Thomas Saggese (R) 3B
7. Masyn Winn (R) SS
8. Pedro Pagés (R) C
9. Victor Scott II (L) CF

Well, well, well what do we have here? The same Chicago White Sox team that blew a six-run lead just last week has now roared back to life, winning four of its last five. Unfortunately, the Cleveland Guardians are still selling their souls to win every game they play, but that streak will eventually run out … right?

Either way, the White Sox have a three-game homestand to end the season against the worst team in baseball. If they can manage a sweep and the Kansas City Royals can avoid one of their own, the division is ours. Granted, the division would be already wrapped up if the White Sox hadn’t mostly sleepwalked through September, but what are you going to do?

The South Siders have clinched a playoff spot after years of despair, and now the ball is in their court to end the season on a high note. Standing, or more acting as a traffic cone in their way, are the Colorado Rockies. To put it simply, the Rockies are pathetic and their pitching staff is the worst in the majors by a wide margin. It’s not a surprise for a franchise that’s been struggling for relevance since 2018, and the Rockies have looked like they’ve wanted to go home since the All-Star break if we’re being honest.

All that lines up for a golden opportunity for the White Sox, but we’ve seen this all before. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves and make sure the guys who are now likely extremely hungover can get the job done.

Starting for the Colorado Rockies is Tomoyuki Sugano, who may be the most confusing pitcher in history. He has a 5.36 ERA but an 12-11 record for a 102-loss team. He’s gone winless in his last seven starts, with six losses and an ERA over eight. Somehow, in the eight games before that, he had a ERA of more than 5 yet went 6-1 over that stretch.

For as bad as Sugano has been lately, he did give up just one hit and one run in his last outing against the Seattle Mariners. Somehow, the Rockies play well when he pitches, so this isn’t the “easy win” it should be on paper.

As for the White Sox, they are throwing out Sean Burke. Burke has been a stud for most of the season and while his record (3-1) over his last seven starts has been solid, his ERA of more than five has left plenty to be desired. Thanks to their own actions, the margin for error for the White Sox is nonexistent, so Burke will need to be sharp so the White Sox can get ahead early.

This is usually the part where I make a prediction and say what I think is going to happen, but I truly don’t know any longer. This team looked dead to rights after one of the worst blown leads I’ve seen in a while just last week, but somehow they’ve picked themselves up off the mat.

This Chicago team is just as likely to lose by 10 as they are to put up 20 runs, so I might as well just say to tune in. If it’s like any of the previous 159 games, it’ll be an entertaining game one way or another.

Now, would somebody PLEASE beat the Guardians?

Here is the lineup for the Chicago White Sox:

Here is the lineup for the Colorado Rockies:

First pitch is at 6:40 p.m. CDT. The game will be televised on CHSN and can be heard on ESPN Chicago 1000. Drop your predictions and thoughts down below!

This just in, ladies and gentlemen: Pete Alonso is really good at baseball.

The Most Valuable Oriole continued to be the best thing to happen to this franchise in a long time, adding two more homers to his league-leading total in a 10-2 blowout win to open a doubleheader against the Yankees.

Whatever other things have gone wrong for the Orioles this year — and oh boy, are there many — Pete Alonso has been worth the price of admission all by himself. Tonight, even in a game that had no meaning for either team, he proved why.

Alonso stepped to the plate with a man aboard in the third against Yankees starter Brendan Beck, who’d begun the game with two scoreless innings. Pete put an end to that real quick. He drove a 407-foot dinger into the left-field seats, his 42nd of the year. At that point, Alonso’s last seven hits had all been dingers. Did I mention this guy is good at baseball?

The Orioles turned the game into a laugher in the fourth even without Pete being prominently involved (though he did get a single). The O’s loaded the bases with nobody out for the soft underbelly of the lineup, including Christian Franklin and Carlos Narváez, who entered the game with a combined zero RBIs in 132 plate appearances with the Orioles. That’s Caleb Joseph territory right there. Franklin managed to get off the schneid with a sharp single to right, collecting his first major league RBI, but Narváez remained in his drought by hitting into a force at the plate.

It shouldn’t be that hard to get one measly RBI, Carlos. Just watch as Dylan Beavers gets four of them in one at-bat! The O’s right fielder jumped on a hanging curveball from Beck and clobbered it into the right-field seats for his first career grand slam. Beavers! With one mighty swing, the Orioles had an insurmountable 7-0 lead.

The Birds’ victory was all but assured, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have some more fun along the way. In the top of the sixth, Jeremiah Jackson lofted a fly ball to deep center field. Spencer Jones loped back at an ambling pace, as if he had the ball tracked all the way, but when he reached up to make the catch, it glanced off his glove and deflected to the wall. The ball trickled along the warning track for so long that Jackson just kept circling the bases, and by the time the Yankees got the ball into the infield, Jackson had slid in safely with an inside-the-park home run.

Look at the wheels on Jeremiah! If you’d told me that the Orioles would have two inside-the-parkers this season and they’d be hit by Coby Mayo and Jeremiah Jackson, I’m not sure I would’ve believed you. This has been a strange season, occasionally in good ways.

You know what’s not strange? Pete Alonso being awesome. It’s just what he does, and always has. Alonso led off the seventh against reliever Yerry de los Santos and absolutely demolished a baseball. Holy smokes, was it tattooed, a mammoth blast the landed high into the left-field bleacher seats.

Pete, that baseball had a family! The blast was his second of the game and AL-leading 43rd of the year, and extended his AL-leading RBI count to 112. In all likelihood, Pete is going to take two of the three Triple Crown categories. He won’t win AL MVP, and I’m not saying he should, but…is there any player in the American League who’s really that much better than him? I’d put him in my top five for sure.

This game was all Orioles, but if there was one disappointing aspect, it’s that Trevor Rogers didn’t get the chance to earn the win in what may well have been his final start as an Oriole. Rogers pitched brilliantly tonight as always, but the Orioles, in an apparently pre-planned move, removed him from the game after four innings and 55 pitches.

I mean…why? Rogers was showing no signs of fatigue. He mowed down the Yankees in the first four frames, throwing 41 strikes and just 14 balls. He allowed only one run, on an Amed Rosario RBI single in the fourth, and the O’s had a comfortable six-run lead when he left. Was his arm really going to fall off if he threw more than 55 pitches in his final start of the season?

I will grant that he’d already thrown a career-high 169.2 innings this season, and perhaps the Orioles saw no reason to push him in a meaningless game, but I would’ve let him at least pitch one more inning to get a W next to his name. Mostly I just don’t want to accept that this might’ve been the last time we see Rogers in an Orioles uniform.

The Orioles hit double digits in runs on Gunnar Henderson’s RBI single in the eighth that deflected off the second baseman, and the bullpen took it from there. Albert Suárez, now in his sixth stint with the Orioles this year, did his usual quality work in long relief. He tossed four scoreless innings and struck out five, even despite a nosebleed that afflicted him in the eighth. Suárez has been an unsung hero of the O’s bullpen, constantly eating up innings without complaint even when he knows he’ll probably get DFA’d the next day, then inevitably returning to the roster to do it all over again.

Alex Hoppe’s ninth inning was a mess — 22 pitches, two walks, and a run — but a nine-run lead gives you plenty of wiggle room, and he eventually finished it with a called strikeout of Ben Rice. Orioles win, 10-2. Not a bad way to start the weekend.

Today is my penultimate game thread for the 2026 MLB Regular season. You might have noticed I’ve been using that word a lot lately. You’ve probably guessed it’s my favorite word. You’re right.

Last time we were together, Noah Cameron was performing his penultimate start to the season. Today is the ultimate. It would be swell if he performed that colloquially as well as definitionally and did something crazy like pitch a no-hitter. The Guardians clinched a playoff berth last night. Perhaps they’re too hungover to hit? They don’t add asterisks for that, though, so Cameron should try to take advantage.

The Guardians are still battling for an opportunity to win the division rather than simply to make a playoff berth. They currently lead the White Sox by a single game in the standings, but the White Sox hold the tiebreaker, so all it will take is for Chicago to win a single game more than the Guardians do this weekend for them to claim the division crown. I’m hoping the Royals sweep the Guardians and make it easy for them. Still, the point I’m taking forever to get to is that Gavin Williams gets the start for Cleveland rather than preparing himself for a playoff series, because if the Guardians can hold out, they won’t have to play in the Wild Card series anyway.

By the numbers, Gavin has been terrific this year for Cleveland. Eating innings with style. If you dig a little deeper, you find that he is nearly elite at generating both chase and whiffs. One interesting note to me is that he has universally struggled a bit when hitters actually make contact with any of his pitches. He mixes up his pitches well, so rather than hunt a particular pitch, the Royals might be best served just trying to make contact with whatever he throws and hope for the best.

Williams has faced the Royals twice this year. In their first series, he tossed 5.2 innings of 1-run ball and struck out 8. But he also walked 5, which contributed to the short outing. He took the loss in their second meeting during the second series between the two teams, giving up 5 runs in 6 innings, though he only walked 2 and struck out 7. The Royals managed to sequence really well in that game, scoring those five runs on only eight hits with a pair of doubles and a pair of dingers.

Lineups

It’s kind of funny that Isaac Collins got left out of tonight’s lineup. He’s been unplayably bad for a bit now, but the last time the Royals faced Williams, he had a home run and a double in a 3-for-3 effort. Still, this is probably the best lineup the Royals can put together with their current roster. You could argue that Michael Massey should be above Salvador Perez, or that Nick Loftin should start in left and shift John Rave to center to bench Kyle Isbel. That would all be nitpicking, though. Hopefully the Royals can bring Denny Matthews a win for his 8000th broadcast!