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Bryce Eldridge reveals which Giants veteran has mentored him originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

On Wednesday night, Giants rookie Bryce Eldridge showed a glimpse into why he’s one of MLB’s top prospects.

The 20-year-old first baseman contributed a 109.7 mph rocket for a double, plus an opposite-field single for his first multi-hit game in the big leagues during San Francisco’s 4-3 win over the St. Louis Cardinals at Oracle Park.

After the game, Eldridge revealed which Giants veteran he has leaned on for advice since making his MLB debut last week.

“I’ve kind of just been trying to talk to [Matt] Chapman,” Eldridge told Bonta Hill and Shawn Estes on “Giants Postgame Live.” “He’s hilarious, he’s awesome and obviously he’s been around for a little bit. He knows what he’s doing.

“The biggest thing a lot of these guys have been telling me is just have fun. It’s the same game, and don’t get overwhelmed by it. These guys in the clubhouse have made it easy for me to not do that, and I’m enjoying every second of it. It’s been awesome, and it’s finally good to get a home win.”

Chapman, an All-Star third baseman and five-time Gold Glove winner, certainly isn’t a bad mentor to have as Eldridge seeks to get his footing at the top level. Baseball’s No. 13 prospect, per MLB Pipeline, went just 1 for 20 in his first seven games with San Francisco before his two-hit night on Wednesday.

With just three games left in the 2025 season for the already-eliminated Giants, Eldridge will look to have a big series this weekend against the Colorado Rockies to end the year on a high note — perhaps acquiring some momentum heading into 2026.

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Mariners' Cal Raleigh becomes 7th MLB player to ever hit 60 home runs in a season originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

Cal Raleigh became the seventh player in Major League Baseball history to hit 60 home runs in a season Wednesday night, launching two solo shots for the Seattle Mariners against the Colorado Rockies.

“It’s crazy. Sixty is — I don’t know what to say,” said Raleigh, who leads the majors in homers. “I didn’t know if I was going to hit 60 in my life. Just tonight, what a way to do it.”

Batting left-handed in the first inning, the switch-hitting catcher connected off Tanner Gordon and sent a drive to right field that reached the top deck at T-Mobile Park for his 59th longball of the year.

“It was like a movie,” teammate Julio Rodríguez said of Raleigh’s moonshot. “I’m just so grateful that he’s on our team, that he’s able to do what he does. He’s so special, and I can’t say enough.”

Then in the eighth, batting left-handed again, Raleigh hit No. 60 off Angel Chivilli. Raleigh also had a two-run double in the second and finished with four RBIs to give him 125 this season, most in the American League.

With a 9-2 victory, Seattle clinched its fourth AL West title and first since 2001.

The only other players to reach 60 home runs in a season are Babe Ruth (1927), Roger Maris (1961), Mark McGwire (1998 and ‘99), Sammy Sosa (1998, ’99, 2001), Barry Bonds (2001) and Aaron Judge (2022).

It was the 11th multi-homer game for Raleigh this year, tied with Judge (2022), Hank Greenberg (1938) and Sosa (1998) for the MLB record.

With four games remaining in the regular season, Raleigh has a chance to pass Judge for the American League record. Judge hit 62 homers in 2022 to break the previous AL mark of 61 set by Maris in 1961.

Raleigh’s latest homers came four days after he surpassed Ken Griffey Jr. for the franchise record with his 57th homer of the season. Griffey hit 56 in both 1997 and 1998.

Raleigh also broke Mickey Mantle’s previous MLB record of 54 home runs by a switch-hitter that had stood since 1961. And the Seattle slugger has set a new standard for homers by a catcher, eclipsing the 48 hit by Salvador Perez in 2021.

Raleigh is four home runs ahead of Phillies designated hitter Kyle Schwarber and six in front of Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani.

“When you look at how he has done it and the position that he plays — I was telling somebody earlier today that when you come off the field, you’re mentally and physically exhausted,” said Mariners manager Dan Wilson, a former major league catcher.

“And for him to do what he’s done offensively and to do what he does behind the plate, I honestly don’t think we’ve seen this before. It’s been incredible. I think he deserves the MVP, no question.”

Mariners' Cal Raleigh becomes 7th MLB player to ever hit 60 home runs in a season originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

Cal Raleigh became the seventh player in Major League Baseball history to hit 60 home runs in a season Wednesday night, launching two solo shots for the Seattle Mariners against the Colorado Rockies.

“It’s crazy. Sixty is — I don’t know what to say,” said Raleigh, who leads the majors in homers. “I didn’t know if I was going to hit 60 in my life. Just tonight, what a way to do it.”

Batting left-handed in the first inning, the switch-hitting catcher connected off Tanner Gordon and sent a drive to right field that reached the top deck at T-Mobile Park for his 59th longball of the year.

“It was like a movie,” teammate Julio Rodríguez said of Raleigh’s moonshot. “I’m just so grateful that he’s on our team, that he’s able to do what he does. He’s so special, and I can’t say enough.”

Then in the eighth, batting left-handed again, Raleigh hit No. 60 off Angel Chivilli. Raleigh also had a two-run double in the second and finished with four RBIs to give him 125 this season, most in the American League.

With a 9-2 victory, Seattle clinched its fourth AL West title and first since 2001.

The only other players to reach 60 home runs in a season are Babe Ruth (1927), Roger Maris (1961), Mark McGwire (1998 and ‘99), Sammy Sosa (1998, ’99, 2001), Barry Bonds (2001) and Aaron Judge (2022).

It was the 11th multi-homer game for Raleigh this year, tied with Judge (2022), Hank Greenberg (1938) and Sosa (1998) for the MLB record.

With four games remaining in the regular season, Raleigh has a chance to pass Judge for the American League record. Judge hit 62 homers in 2022 to break the previous AL mark of 61 set by Maris in 1961.

Raleigh’s latest homers came four days after he surpassed Ken Griffey Jr. for the franchise record with his 57th homer of the season. Griffey hit 56 in both 1997 and 1998.

Raleigh also broke Mickey Mantle’s previous MLB record of 54 home runs by a switch-hitter that had stood since 1961. And the Seattle slugger has set a new standard for homers by a catcher, eclipsing the 48 hit by Salvador Perez in 2021.

Raleigh is four home runs ahead of Phillies designated hitter Kyle Schwarber and six in front of Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani.

“When you look at how he has done it and the position that he plays — I was telling somebody earlier today that when you come off the field, you’re mentally and physically exhausted,” said Mariners manager Dan Wilson, a former major league catcher.

“And for him to do what he’s done offensively and to do what he does behind the plate, I honestly don’t think we’ve seen this before. It’s been incredible. I think he deserves the MVP, no question.”

If the Dodgers are going to win 13 games in October, they will likely have to master the playbook they ran Wednesday night.

Starting pitchers came out of the bullpen. Another late-inning collapse didn’t cripple their psyche. The offense delivered timely hits when it needed to. And the team grinded out a 5-4 extra-innings win over the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The story of the night, in an unexpected but entirely warranted late-season plot twist, was Roki Sasaki and Clayton Kershaw throwing scoreless innings of relief for a beleaguered Dodgers bullpen.

The theme, however, was improvisation with the roster and resiliency in the dugout, moving the team within a win of another National League West division championship.

“I know the word resilience gets thrown out a lot, but it was a resilient win and a resilient group,” manager Dave Roberts said. “We fought our tails off until the end. It didn’t look good at different points of the game. But Arizona fought as well. So it was a heck of a ball game … Really good stuff.”

Read more:Dodgers bullpen remains a mess. Can Roki Sasaki’s return provide trustworthy relief?

The game wasn’t settled until the 11th inning, when Tommy Edman gave the Dodgers a lead with an RBI single and Justin Wrobleski closed out a rare stress-free save.

It never would’ve gotten there, however, without the contributions Sasaki and Kershaw provided out of the bullpen earlier in the evening.

After all the struggles from the Dodgers’ traditional relievers lately, it was the two starting pitchers who helped save the day.

Activated from the injured list shortly before the game, and making his first appearance in the majors since suffering a shoulder injury in early May, Sasaki flashed hugely promising signs with a scoreless frame in the bottom of the seventh — protecting a 3-1 lead the team had been staked to by Blake Snell’s six-inning, one-run start, and an early offensive outburst that included a two-run homer from Andy Pages.

Sasaki’s fastball averaged 98-99 mph, was located with precision on the corners of the strike zone, and even induced a couple key swing-and-misses, things he never did consistently while posting a 4.72 ERA in eight starts at the beginning of his highly anticipated rookie big-league season.

He paired it with a splitter that was also commanded much better than at any point in his initial MLB stint, when a lack of velocity and inability to attack the strike zone made his trademark pitch an ineffective weapon.

Sasaki needed only 13 pitches to retire the side in order, punctuating his outing with a pair of strikeouts on 99-mph four-seamers. As he walked back to the dugout, he glanced toward his teammates with a stoic glare. Just about all of them, including Shohei Ohtani, applauded in approval.

“One hundred, with a nasty split, OK Roki,” Snell joked afterward. “I think everyone’s going to be so excited for him. And if he can do that, that’s a big help for us. Big boost.”

As usual, disaster did eventually strike in the eighth, even after the Dodgers (89-69) extended their lead to 4-1 on Teoscar Hernández’s RBI double in the top half of the inning.

The bullpen’s lone season-long stalwart, Alex Vesia, ran into trouble by giving up a single to Ketel Marte, a walk to Geraldo Perdomo, and an RBI double to Corbin Carroll, all with one out.

Read more:How Bill Russell stayed connected to baseball, and reconnected with the Dodgers

Hard-throwing rookie righty Edgardo Henriquez couldn’t put out the fire from there, giving up one run on a swinging bunt from Gabriel Moreno in front of the plate that spun away from catcher Ben Rortvedt, then another when pinch-hitter Adrian Del Castillo stayed alive on a generous two-strike call (which was no doubt impacted by Rortvedt dropping the pitch behind the plate) before lifting a sacrifice fly to center.

It was the second three-run lead the Dodgers' bullpen had squandered in as many nights.

It was the latest example of their unreliable relief corps imploding even with ample late-game cushion.

So, to calm the waters, Roberts made another out-of-the-box pitching move with the score still tied at 4-4 in the bottom of the ninth.

In what was his first relief appearance since the infamous fifth game of the 2019 NL Division Series, Kershaw came trotting in from the bullpen and got the game to extras.

"It's an adrenaline rush, for sure,” said Kershaw, who retired all three batters he faced with the help of a diving catch from Edman in center. “I think relieving is just a different animal altogether. You kind of have to figure out how to maintain your heartbeat and get going. But it is a lot of fun, and it's fun to have success out there. So fortunate to get through that inning.”

Kershaw had volunteered to pitch in relief Tuesday night, effectively replacing his between-starts bullpen session ahead of what will be his final career regular-season start Sunday in Seattle.

Come October, however, his best fit on the roster might come in a full-time (and perhaps high-leverage) relief role, thanks to the Dodgers’ abundance of starting pitching options and lack of trustworthy late-game depth.

“I think that right now, you’re betting on people,” Roberts said. “For me, I trust Clayton.”

In extras, the rest of the bullpen finally held up. Blake Treinen inherited a bases-loaded jam with two out in the 10th, but got James McCann to fly out to shallow right field. Wrobleski (another pitcher who began this season as a starter) was handed a save situation in the 11th, after Edman singled home a run with his third hit of the night, and retired the side in order.

“That was like a playoff game,” Roberts said.

And once the actual postseason begins, it’s the kind of performance the Dodgers will have to replicate again and again.

Read more:Dodgers Dugout: Is this the worst bullpen in L.A. Dodgers history?

Their traditional bullpen, after all, remains a mess. The need for alternatives like Sasaki, Kershaw and Emmet Sheehan (another starting pitcher likely to pitch in relief in the playoffs) has become immense.

It made Wednesday something of a trial run for how this year’s team will need to win games in October. It provided a sense of belief that, despite all of the recent relief problems, they can still piece together ways to mount a World Series defense.

"We're kind of at the point of at the point of the season where we're just doing whatever it takes to win ballgames,” Edman said. “I think that's what's great about our squad, is that we have a lot of guys who are no egos and just going to do whatever it takes."

Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

After the Mets' 10-3 loss to the Chicago Cubs on Wednesday night at Wrigley Field, manager Carlos Mendoza and players spoke about the team's defense and the wild-card race...

Mets' defense needs to be cleaned up

The Mets have played sloppy baseball over the last few games, and it has cost them in some respects. In Tuesday's eventual win, miscues and errors put the Mets behind the eight-ball before the offense caught fire to make their comeback. But the sloppy defense of Mark Vientos and others put the game out of reach.

After Francisco Alvarez's two-run bomb in the fifth put the Mets on the board and cut the Cubs' lead to 6-2, the bottom half of the inning saw Vientos, starting at third base, back off on a two-out grounder by Pete Crow-Armstrong and then launch the ball into the ground that Pete Alonso could not come up with. The throwing error allowed Moises Ballesteros to score from third base and PCA to go to second. The play took away momentum from the Mets.

The inning got worse, as Clay Holmes threw a wild pitch that let PCA get to third, but the young outfielder hustled home, noticing Holmes was late covering the plate and slid in safely to put the Cubs up 8-2.

Before the game, Mendoza said the Mets players knew they had to be better than that and maintained that stance afterward.

"They are routine plays, at this level you expect them to be made," Mendoza said of Vientos' error. "We just have to be better."

The Mets skipper was asked if he felt if the error was a result of Vientos trying too hard, and Mendoza didn't see it that way.

"Those are routine plays. This is the big leagues, routine plays, we expect those plays to be made. And they know that."

"We have to clean it up," Francisco Lindor said after the game about the team's defense. "It’s not for a lack of effort. Everyone’s putting their time. Everyone was out there taking groundballs, doing their thing. It’s just stuff that happens. Part of the game. We have to be better. I take full responsibility for my mistakes, and I’m sure everyone here takes full responsibility for their mistakes, as well. We know how to play the game, we know what to do, we just got to get it done."

Mendoza had Vientos start at third base against the left-handed Matthew Boyd on Wednesday. He sacrificed defense for offense and admitted as such after the game, but said there were other factors to his decision.

"There’s a balance there when you’re facing a lefty," Mendoza explained. "Jonah [Tong] is a flyball pitcher. You’re trying to create some offense too, and Mark is one of those guys, especially when we’re facing lefties. He will continue to get opportunities." 

Vientos went 1-for-4 with two strikeouts on Wednesday and is hitting .180 (9-for-50) with a home run and four RBI over his last 15 games.

Mets scoreboard watching

The Mets are one of three teams vying for the final NL wild card spot. Entering Wednesday's games, the Mets controlled their own destiny as they sat one game ahead of both the Diamondbacks and Reds.

The Reds' game against the Pirates finished before the Mets-Cubs tilt and Mendoza said he noticed the score when Wednesday's eventual loss got out of hand. Despite the favor the Pirates gave the Mets, the team is only worried about how they are playing and they know they need to figure it out fast.

"You can’t worry about [the Reds], you gotta play better," Mendoza said. "It doesn’t matter what other teams are doing, it starts with us. We’re better than that."

"We control our own destiny. It’s all about winning," Lindor said. "It’s only natural that we peek. Everyone is on it as well. We want to win because we control our destiny."

With the Reds' loss, the Mets remain one game ahead of Cincinnati for the final spot.  Both teams have four games remaining on their schedule. New York finishes their series with the Cubs on Thursday before heading to Miami to take on the Marlins for three. The Reds finish their series against the Pirates before going to Milwaukee for three.

One night after David Peterson's poor outing saw him fail to get out of the second inning, the Mets needed some length from Wednesday night's starterJonah Tong. Unfortunately, the young right-hander failed to record an out in the third as he surrendered five runs in that frame in a 10-3 loss to the Chicago Cubs.

“We’ll piece it together. We’ll continue to find ways to get 27 outs, and get the wins that we need here,” manager Carlos Mendoza said when asked about his side’s plans for the season’s final four games as they cling to the final NL Wild Card spot. “It’s not easy, especially what’s happened the last couple of days, even after an off day [Monday].”

With Huascar Brazobán, Tyler Rogers, and Edwin Diaz unavailable out of the beleaguered bullpen, part of that piece work from the skipper came in the form of using Clay Holmes and Sean Manaea for an inning each, as they worked on two days' rest after throwing 57 and 50 pitches respectively on Sunday. 

“It was their bullpen day, pretty much, and they volunteered yesterday,” Mendoza said. “Like, ‘Hey, if you guys need us.’ You appreciate that; it says a lot about them. And here we were today needing them. And instead of throwing that bullpen, they ended up throwing in the game.

“But this is something that’s gonna be day-to-day. Whether they’re starting, whether we need them out of the bullpen. We’re gonna try and put our best guys there to get 27 outs.” 

Their short outings – Holmes throwing 14 pitches and Manaea 16 – still have the duo in line to be available on Saturday, “at the earliest,” Mendoza said.

The trouble began for Tong immediately as he put the first two runners on base with a double and a walk in the first inning, before a strikeout and a fine defensive play by Tyrone Taylor kept the Cubs off the board. After a bounce-back second, it looked like Tong could be set for another bounce-back start.

“Tough first, huge play by Tyrone,” Tong said. “And thought I figured it out in the second, and then, they just got to me.”  

In that third, the Cubs went: single, walk, single, double, single, and double to score four runs in and ended his night without an out recorded in the frame.

“They got him. They were aggressive on the fastball,” Mendoza said. “I feel like, other than the second inning, he had a hard time elevating the fastball, and that’s what makes him who he is. They took some really good changeups.”

“I made my effort, just didn’t execute it,” the righty said about struggling to elevate the heater. “Just gotta do a better job limiting damage there.”

The 22-year-old was just a two-pitch pitcher on the night, throwing the fastball and changeup 51 times out of 56 offerings. “I don’t think he used the breaking ball enough,” Mendoza said. “He could have done a better job of mixing there. Especially once they were all over the fastball.”

Four of his breaking pitches went for balls, and the other was smashed up the middle for a first-inning single.

Tong agreed with the manager’s assessment: “Definitely have to establish that more in the zone and keep just being unpredictable. Just gotta do a better job on my part.”

And, amid pitching staff-wide struggles, it is a tough task for Tong and fellow rookies Brandon Sproat and Nolan McLean to do the heavy lifting in high-pressure games at the business end of the season while they’re still figuring out how to pitch in the majors. 

“You got some of these guys going through it at the big league level, especially where we’re at,” Mendoza said. “It’s hard to put it on them or to blame them. This is where we are. We continue to go through it.” 

After a fast rise from the Double-A ranks to the big leagues and a Wild Card race, the pressure of it all getting to the youngster could be understandable. But he said he entered the start with the mentality that “it’s just another baseball game.”

“Pressure is a privilege,” he said. “And I’m just out there just trying to do the best that I can.”

Mendoza doesn’t believe that the rough time for Tong (a 7.71 ERA through his first 18.2 innings) will impact his development. “Not at all,” he said. 

Tong, who could still be used again either as a starter or out of the bullpen before the regular season ends on Sunday, said that he can “execute his pitches a little bit better, slow the game down, and go from there.”

He added, “Going to continue to be myself.”