Friday’s Brewers-Braves matchup delivered the kind of ace duel that lives up to the billing. Jacob Misiorowski and Chris Sale both gave their teams a chance, but Milwaukee came away with a 2-1 win after scoring both of its runs in the third inning.
William Contreras drove in one with a single, and Andrew Vaughn followed with an RBI groundout. Sale took the loss after allowing two runs on eight hits over six innings, while Misiorowski kept Atlanta quiet with four hits and two walks allowed and six strikeouts across six shutout innings.
The young right-hander also picked up his 13th win of the season.
The tight races in the East are starting to tilt a little, thanks to a pair of slumps from the division leaders. The Braves and Rays are both 2-6 over their last eight games, and the teams chasing them are taking advantage.
Philadelphia is rolling, winning seven straight after Friday’s 7-6 victory over the Cardinals. Alec Bohm delivered the biggest swing of the night with a two-run, walkoff triple in the 10th inning, and that win pulled the Phillies to within four games of Atlanta in the NL East.
In the AL East, the Yankees have strung together five straight wins and are now three games behind Tampa Bay.
Jake Rogers has already found a moment to remember in a White Sox uniform. His path to Chicago has been anything but ordinary - he spent his entire MLB career with the Tigers until less than a month ago, then two trades and a waiver claim sent him bouncing to four different big league teams in 29 days.
The White Sox claimed him off waivers from the Red Sox on August 14, and on Friday he rewarded them in a big way. Rogers launched a two-run walkoff homer to beat the Mets 6-4, capping a comeback from a 4-0 deficit through the first five innings and pushing Chicago’s lead in the AL Central to 4.5 games over the Twins and Guardians.
Texas also had to grind one out in extra innings, and this one came down to a costly mistake. The Rangers edged the Angels 2-1 in 10 innings when Denzer Guzman’s throwing error ended the game.
Neither side scored before extras, then Wyatt Langford tied things with an RBI double and Ezequiel Duran followed with the infield single that set up the decisive play. The win moved Texas into the final AL wild card spot, and the Rangers are now only a game behind the Astros in the AL West.
In Other News...
Yankees Fans Just Got A Bittersweet Didi Gregorius Update
Didi Gregorius has officially retired from professional baseball, closing the book on a career that took him from the majors to the Mexican League and, most recently, to the Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic. For Yankees fans, the news lands with a little extra weight because Gregorius remains best known for his five seasons in New York, where he became a steady presence at shortstop from 2015 to 2019.
His MLB run stretched across 11 seasons and also included stops with the Reds, Diamondbacks and Phillies, but the Yankees years are the ones that still shape how he is remembered in the Bronx. Gregorius finished with a .257 batting average, 134 home runs and 530 RBIs in 1,077 games, a solid career line for a player whose time in pinstripes gave the club one of its more dependable everyday performers of that era. [Read more 🡒]
LeMahieu Just Added An Awkward Twist To His Yankees Exit
DJ LeMahieu found a different kind of success in his first season as a manager, leading the Royal Oak Leprechauns to a Northwoods League championship and adding a new line to a baseball rsum that already had plenty of major league mileage. After years with the Yankees, the veteran infielder has shifted into a dugout role and immediately shown he can still guide a team through a long summer grind, with the Leprechauns leaning on the kind of grit and consistent effort he said carried them all the way to the title.
For Yankees fans, the awkward part is what comes next. LeMahieu was released by New York in 2025 and never played another major league game, but the financial piece of his departure has not fully disappeared, since he is still being paid by the Yankees under his existing contract. So while his on-field exit from the organization is already in the rearview, the last chapter of his Yankees tenure is still showing up in the team's books. [Read more 🡒]
Yankees Prospect Is Forcing A Tough Debate About The Teams Future
Luis Durangos rise through the Yankees system has become one of the more intriguing development stories in the organization this season. The 23-year-old outfielder has hit .338/.396/.411 across three levels while swiping 43 bases, and his style is hard to miss: a high-contact approach built more around putting the ball in play and using the ground than trying to drive it over the fence. It is the kind of profile that can stand out in an era obsessed with power, especially when it keeps producing against better competition.
The debate for the Yankees is less about whether Durango has improved and more about how much of this can carry over to the majors. His unconventional swing path draws obvious comparisons to Ichiro Suzuki, but there are real questions about whether his body type and contact-first game will translate the same way against big league pitching. For an organization always weighing present needs against future upside, Durango has made himself impossible to ignore, even if the answer on his long-term fit is still unsettled. [Read more 🡒]