Last Night in Baseball: Astros and Blue Jays Suddenly Tied for AL's Best Record

Fox Sports

2 days ago

There is always baseball happening — almost too much baseball for one person to handle themselves.
That's why we're here to help, though, by sifting through the previous days' games, and figuring out what you missed, but shouldn't have. Here are all the best moments from last night in Major League Baseball: Astros sweep, Blue Jays win, now they're both AL's best
It's been a rough week for the Tigers. First, the Brewers come in with their win streak and take away the best record in MLB from them, despite Detroit being the first to 60 wins and spending most of the season with that designation. Then, the Pirates sweep the Tigers, and while that's happening, the Astros win their fourth in a row and take over as the holder of the American League's best record. At 60-42, Houston has as many wins as the Tigers, but with one fewer loss, and they're a game back of Milwaukee for the top record in MLB.
It was former Diamondback Christian Walker that sealed the deal for the Astros. In the top of the ninth, with one out, two in scoring position and Kevin Ginkel on the mound trying to preserve the tie, Walker singled to center, driving in Zack Short.
Josh Hader would throw a scoreless ninth to secure the save, and it was ballgame, Houston. While the Astros have won four in a row and now have the AL's best record, they've actually slipped a bit in July: they're 10-8 on the month, after a 19-7 June. The Tigers have played worse than that for longer, however — they're 7-11 in July and were a more modest 15-11 in June — allowing Houston to catch up. And the Blue Jays, too.
While the Astros wrapped earlier in the day, the Jays picked up their own 60th win of the year later on Wednesday against the Yankees, securing the end-of-season tiebreaker against them in the process. It was a team effort, but let's highlight the work of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in particular.
When you think of him and how he earned his half-billion dollar extension, you're bound to think about Vladdy's power first. He can hit baseballs very far! On Wednesday, he contributed again and again to the Blue Jays series-clinching win over the Yankees, but his power had nothing to do with it. It was all glove, baby. And also a little well-placed infield chopper.
Leo Jimenez makes his own fantastic defensive effort there to kick the play off, but Guerrero's sweeping stretch to secure the throw deserves a nod, too.
Later on, Guerrero Jr. would hit a chopper to Max Fried, but really to the no man's land that allows for everything to go wrong for the team on defense — which it did. Fried failed to get the runner out at home, and the throw also wasn't secured, allowing it to get by and for another run to score. Guerrero hit a ball about 50 feet, and drove in two runs, anyway.
Later on, Guerrero would show off how you're supposed to handle a nasty infield hop.
In real time, that looks like Guerrero just getting bowled over by a line drive, but with the fixed camera behind him on the replay, you can see that Guerrero actually dropped on purpose to adjust for a ridiculous hop, and then fell down after the grab because of the angle he had put himself at. Great stuff. Toronto would end up winning 8-4 powered in no small part by defensive plays like that, while the Yankees would make four errors in the loss. It wasn't just the Yankees, though
Costly errors weren't exclusive to New York on Wednesday. The Athletics had two players running towards this shallow fly, and that was either one too many or one shy of how many they needed to get it done.
Sure, in the box score that's counted as a hit and not an error, but at the least we can slap a mental error on both shortstop Jacob Wilson and left fielder Tyler Soderstrom, who had come in to pinch-hit in the prior inning. Best not to think about whether Miguel Andujar, who had been replaced in the lineup and in left by Soderstrom, would have either caught that or allowed Wilson to reel it in without the interruption that caused the problem in the first place.
Regardless, no one caught it, and the Rangers would win, 2-1, because of the run scored on this play. Harper gets to 350
Aaron Judge is the fastest player to ever reach 350 career homers in terms of how many games it took him to get to that mark, but there are other ways to measure speed. Bryce Harper took a different notable one, as, with his 350th career home run on Wednesday, he became the youngest active player to reach that threshold.
Harper is 32 years old, and will turn 33 on Oct. 16, whereas Judge already turned 33 years old in 2025. Harper is the eighth active player with at least 350 career home runs, joining Judge, Nolan Arenado, Freddie Freeman, Paul Goldschmidt, Manny Machado, Giancarlo Stanton and Mike Trout. Kyle Schwarber (32 years old, 317 homers) and Eugenio Suárez (33, 312) are the next most-likely to 350, too, so Harper is likely to hold on as the youngest active to 350 for a bit, at least until Juan Soto (26, 225) threatens. Glasnow whiffs a dozen
It's taken Tyler Glasnow a little bit of time to get going in 2025, between injury and shaking the rust off, but his last few outings have been great. He allowed one run on two hits with five strikeouts against three walks on July 9 against the Brewers, then threw six innings with six strikeouts against one walk and one run the last time out in a rematch against the Brew Crew. On Wednesday, Glasnow went a season-high seven innings vs. the Twins, striking out 12 while walking one, allowing three hits and giving up just one run.
The Dodgers would end up winning 4-3, which they can thank Glasnow as well as Shohei Ohtani for that, with the latter notching his fifth-straight game with a homer for that during a 5-for-5 night.
Ohtani once again has the NL home run lead to himself, and he's tied with Aaron Judge for second in MLB at 37 bombs. That long ball also tied a Dodgers' franchise record. Can Ohtani make it six in a row next time out? Verlander got a win!
It took 17 tries, and he had lost all eight of his decisions before this one, but Justin Verlander finally picked up his first win of the season and in a Giants' uniform. Because this is baseball, it wasn't one of Verlander's sharper outings, and yet, he got the W, anyway. Verlander walked five batters in five innings and hit a batter, too, but he was difficult to hit, at least: the 42-year-old right-hander allowed just one hit, and that helped him to erase each and every one of those baserunners without allowing a run.
The Giants' bullpen would allow three runs to the Braves in the seventh, but thanks to San Francisco scoring three runs a piece in the fifth, sixth and seventh, the lead Verlander left them to hold was never in real danger. With Verlander's next win — that would be No. 264 — he'll move into a tie for 40th all-time with Gus Weyhing. Young robs a homer
The Reds defeated the Nationals 5-0, and Nick Lodolo throwing nine shutout innings with eight strikeouts is a big reason for the lopsidedness. It could have been even more lopsided than that, however, if not for Washington's Jacob Young.
Jackson Rutledge left a flat fastball up in the zone, and Will Benson crushed it. He hit it right around the deepest part of the park, however, and that gave Young enough room to work with to reel in the would-be homer. Sure, the Nats still lost, but: great grab.
Young's had a few fantastic ones this year, and this was one of the best of those. He and Denzel Clarke have been putting on a show in center all summer.
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