Rays reliever Bryan Baker has turned into a late-inning answer in a hurry. He opened the season with just four career saves over five MLB seasons, then picked up his 36th save of 2026 last night. Baker has now converted 25 straight chances.
Pete Alonso had a moment in Baltimore that looked like it might swing the night. The Orioles first baseman thought he had launched a go-ahead homer in the bottom of the seventh against the Yankees on Wednesday, only for the ball to be ruled foul.
Baltimore challenged, but the call stood. The ball cleared over the foul pole, which made the ruling even tougher, and the technology to sort out that kind of play simply isn’t in place right now.
“I think a simple fix is like football, you have the pylon camera with the plane, where it shoots right across the goal line,” Alonso said (h/t Roch Kubatko of MASN). “ And I feel like, for us, we could easily have a laser or a camera that shoots straight up.”
Alonso eventually struck out, and New York answered with two runs in the eighth to escape with a close win.
Cade Cavalli was dealing again for Washington. The Nationals right-hander struck out 11 Rangers over six innings last night, and the first eight outs he recorded all came by strikeout.
Over his last two starts, Cavalli has racked up 21 strikeouts in 14 innings. That latest outing also put him in some rare company: he became the third pitcher in team history to throw at least six scoreless innings with double-digit strikeouts three times in a season, joining Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg (h/t Nationals Communications on X).
The Rangers are also expecting Jacob deGrom back on the mound tonight against Washington. He was pulled from his most recent start with triceps fatigue, and Texas decided to give him a little extra time by moving Kumar Rocker ahead of him in the rotation. deGrom hasn’t landed on the injured list this year, but the nagging issues have kept popping up, including hip and glute problems that have limited him at times.
The triceps issue ended his outing after two innings last week. With Nathan Eovaldi already out, the Rangers can’t really afford to lose deGrom now as they try to stay afloat in the AL Wild Card race.
In Other News...
Nationals Get A Real Opening As Rangers Shake Up Their Lineup
The Nationals opened the series by getting shut out 5-0, with Cal Quantrill cruising through seven scoreless innings for Texas. Washington now gets another look at the matchup with Cade Cavalli on the mound, and there is at least a sense that the next game offers a cleaner path for the home side after a flat start against a Rangers club that dictated the game from the outset.
Texas, meanwhile, is giving the lineup a different look as it tries to keep the pressure on. Joc Pederson is set to lead off and handle first base, while Danny Jansen is getting a breather after being activated from the injured list, part of a reshuffled group that could change the tone of the series if Washington does not answer early. [Read more 🡒]
Cade Cavalli Is Giving Nationals Fans Real Reason To Believe
Cade Cavalli keeps giving the Nationals something they have been searching for all season: a starter who can take over a game and make it look routine. Against the Rangers, he threw six scoreless innings, struck out 11 and helped Washington cruise to a 6-0 win, continuing a run that has made his recent stretch impossible to ignore. Over his last 10 starts, Cavalli has posted a 2.12 ERA, and his scoreless-innings streak now sits at 17.
What stood out even more was how quickly he piled up the strikeouts, getting to 10 within four innings, a level of dominance only two other Nationals pitchers have matched since 2005. For a club that has spent plenty of time looking for signs that its rotation can be more than just serviceable, Cavalli is starting to supply them in bunches. The bigger question now is how long he can keep carrying that kind of momentum. [Read more 🡒]
White Sox Have A New Reason To Watch Murakami Closely
The latest midseason hitter rankings are a reminder of how quickly the conversation can shift after the All-Star break, when a hot stretch starts to matter almost as much as the full season line. Yordan Alvarez, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Shohei Ohtani are all featured prominently because of the way they have been driving offenses lately, with Crow-Armstrongs jump from last year standing out as one of the biggest year-to-year gains in the group.
For the Nationals, the broader lesson is the kind of bat profile the front office and fan base have to keep tracking as the season moves on. These rankings are built around current form, not reputation, and they point to a pool of hitters who have found a groove at exactly the right time, while others are still trying to climb back into that conversation. [Read more 🡒]