Last Night in Baseball: Juan Soto is back, back, back

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Juan Soto crushes his second home run of the game, extending Mets’ lead over Diamondbacks

It was the second time this season that Soto hit multiple home runs in the same game. The other time also came against the Diamondbacks less than a week before, on May 1. 

Maybe Soto is the D-backs killer, or maybe, just maybe, he’s turned the corner after a cold start to his Mets career. Soto, who ranked fourth in MLB last season with 41 home runs, had just three dingers through April this season with a .241 batting average and .752 OPS. Since the start of May, he’s hit four homers with a .346 batting average and 1.339 OPS. Even with the slow start dragging down his numbers, he’s up to a 148 OPS+ for the year.

The sample size is small, but the signs are there that Juan Soto, like Carrie Soto, is back.

Your AL-leading Detroit Tigers

In a recent episode of “The Last of Us” (extremely minor spoiler alert), a character mentioned she once had Tigers season tickets. The team that Detroit fielded the year of Outbreak Day on the show (2003) was so bad that it might’ve triggered the fictional pandemic. 

Kidding, but the 2003 Tigers were pretty awful. They got off to a 3-25 start and barely escaped finishing with the worst record in the modern era. 

The 2025 Tigers are on the complete other end of the spectrum. They are a season-best 10 games above .500 and boast the best record (23-13) in the AL. Their latest win came in extra innings Wednesday, when Spencer Torkelson hit a double in the 10th and manager A.J. Hinch earned his 900th victory.

On the other hand, it was another tough loss for the Rockies, who have a league-worst 6-29 record. That’s tied for the second-worst record through 35 games since 1920. Even the 2003 Tigers sat at 8-27!

Hopefully there’s no cordyceps fungus out there watching the Rockies and waiting to attack.

Dodgers record 4-inning save

The Dodgers bullpen has certainly been putting in the work in 2025 while the rotation pitches a man short – injuries to Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell at the same time the team is waiting for the likes of Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw to return to the rotation will do that – and Wednesday was yet another example. 

Instead of a bullpen game where a whole bunch of relievers took a turn, the Dodgers hoped that the combination of Landon Knack and Matt Sauer – both recently added to the roster for basically this purpose – could hold things down and give the other pitchers a rest. And that’s just what happened, with Knack pitching into the sixth inning, and Sauer recording a four-inning save. The 50th that the Dodgers have recorded since saves became a tracked statistic, per True Blue LA. 

You might say that the Dodgers have a Knack for that sort of thing. Is it too early for puns? Sorry, didn’t mean to leave a Sauer taste in your mouth.

Cease and Greene exit with injuries

A tough night for two talented pitchers. Padres‘ starter Dylan Cease had a no-hitter into the seventh inning on Wednesday, but ended up exiting thanks to a cramp in his right forearm. The good news is that Cease came out the other side of some testing looking fine, so there’s no expectation that there’s a larger injury here. On the bad news side, the Yankees ended up thriving post-Cease, and took down the Padres 4-3. Hey, at least San Diego and Cease had Emma Stone cheering for them behind home plate at Yankee Stadium.

The Reds did not have the support of noted Padres’ fan Emma Stone, no, but they did end up winning their game against the Braves, 4-3, despite an early exit by ace Hunter Greene. Greene injured himself on a warm-up pitch before the bottom of the fourth, and will receive a precautionary MRI to see what the issue is. He had been rolling before that, with six strikeouts and just two baserunners over three innings in a short start that lowered his ERA to 2.36.

You can’t keep Schwarber off base

Kyle Schwarber reached base for the 42nd consecutive game – the longest such streak in the majors right now – thanks to a single in the first inning against the Rays. He’s now batting .264/.410/.581 with a 174 OPS+ and league-leading 12 homers on the season, so it’s not like he’s put this streak together with a bunch of mostly quiet nights at the plate, either. 

What’s his secret? Maybe it’s refusing to blink until he absolutely has to.

The Phillies would pick up the W, making them 8-2 over their last 10. Despite this, they still sit two back of the Mets in the NL East, but hey. It’s early.

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