Last Night In Baseball: The Dodgers Stopped The Surging Phillies

There is always baseball happening — almost too much baseball for one person to follow themselves. Don’t worry, we’re here to help you by figuring out what you missed but shouldn’t have. Here are all the best moments from last night in Major League Baseball: The Phillies came back late on Saturday to secure a 4-3 win in this 2025 NLDS rematch, but otherwise, this weekend’s series between them and the Dodgers was all Los Angeles. That felt especially true on Sunday in the rubber game, as the Dodgers scored early and did not let up — the memory of Saturday’s late loss was erased in a hurry. With Los Angeles already up 2-0 in the fourth, left fielder Ryan Ward went deep to make it 3-0: that was the rookie’s first career home run, as he was playing in just his third game and first since mid-April. Second baseman Alex Freeland would follow shortly after with a solo shot of his own to make it 4-0, and that was far more cushion than starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto needed against Philadelphia. Yamamoto lowered his ERA for the season to 2.86 thanks to 5 ⅓ scoreless innings with four scattered hits and 10 strikeouts against just two walks. The Dodgers didn’t give up a run until the ninth, when Jonathan Hernández finally allowed one — by that point, Los Angeles was up 9-1, however. Third baseman Max Muncy helped with that, hitting his 14th homer of the year in the bottom of the seventh. Munch, Freeland and Shohei Ohtani all had two hits on the day, while Freeland also had two runs and RBIs a piece. The Dodgers didn’t get the sweep, no, but they slowed the surging Phillies and have now won 14 of their last 17 games — Los Angeles is now 5.5 up on the Padres in the NL West, as San Diego has been scuffling a bit of late, including a series loss to the upstart Nationals to close out their own May. Mets’ left fielder Juan Soto went yard again — he has hit nine of his 13 homers in his last 15 games — and this time, it was a grand slam. If 13 homers for Juan Soto by June 1 doesn’t sound like that many, remember, he missed considerable time already with an IL stint thanks to a calf strain — he’s played in just 42 of the Mets’ 59 games. Soto has been on fire of late, as he’s hit .382/.469/.873 over that 15-game stretch, and the Mets are looking better as a result. New York still has a ways to go, as 26-33 and fourth place in the NL East isn’t exactly inspiring, but his was a team that had the worst record in MLB not that long ago, and was also swept by the Marlins to drop back into last place in the division, too. This time around, it was the Mets with brooms in hand, as they scored 25 runs against Miami’s nine, seven of which were scored in the first game of the series. Starter Nolan McLean looked a little off for New York in Sunday’s finale, allowing five walks while striking out just two, but his control issues were not also command ones, and he limited the Marlins to two hits and just one run. David Peterson followed with a four-inning scoreless save, and New York had a sweep. Again, New York is under .500 and in fourth, but the Mets are also just 5.5 back of a wild-card spot, which is somehow 2.5 games closer than they were when May kicked off. April was really, really bad for the Mets, but it’s two months back now, as well. Bats flying out of a players’ hands isn’t all that uncommon, but said bat getting not just stopped by a protective net, but caught in it like a bug in a spider web? That’s a lot more unusual. Sadly for Jakob Marsee, that net was the only thing the center fielder’s bat made contact with all day, as he went 0-for-3 with a walk in the loss. On the one hand, the Mariners are in first place in their division. On the other, Seattle is just 31-29 on the season — the American League West has been a mess this year. The M’s have now won six games in a row, however, as they followed up a sweep of the formerly first-place Athletics with another of the Diamondbacks. This was a close one, as the Mariners would end up winning just 3-2. Seattle’s Bryce Miller threw five scoreless innings with six strikeouts, one walk and just one hit allowed, while Arizona’s Merrill Kelly struggled more — eight hits, two walks, just two strikeouts — but held Seattle to two runs across 5 ⅓ all the same. The Mariners would score their second run of the game after Miller had already departed, off of Kelly, when DH Dominic Canzone hit his second homer in as many games to make it 2-1. The D-Backs would answer back in the eighth to tie things up, with Ketel Marte — playing DH on Sunday — hitting a sac fly to score pinch-hitter Gabriel Moreno, who singled before being bunted over to second. Arizona played for one run, and that’s how many they got. Which ended up being unfortunate in extra innings, when the Mariners — at home — got a chance to walk it off. Which they did. Designated hitter Victor Robles, who had entered the game earlier as a pinch-runner, came to the plate with one out and runners on second and third. All he needed was a single to win it, and that’s what he got. The Mariners are now 2.5 up in the West, which isn’t a huge lead but is their largest of the season so far. Considering they were five games under .500 about six weeks ago, that’s not such a bad turnaround, especially with slugging backstop Cal Raleigh either not actually slugging or sitting on the IL, depending on when in the season you’re talking about. Ronald Acuña Jr. had a fairly slow start to the season for the otherwise red-hot Braves, but after coming back from a hamstring strain on May 19 he’s looked a lot more like Ronald Acuña. On Sunday, he hit his fifth homer in 12 games since returning from injury, and is batting .256/.429/.628 in that stretch. Acuña didn’t just hit a homer, though. He absolutely blasted one, 438 feet, off of Reds’ starter Nick Lodolo. It was the right fielder’s fourth-straight game with a long ball, to boot. Sadly for the Braves, it was just a solo shot to lead off the game, and not a portent of things to come. Atlanta would end up losing, 6-4, but the Braves made it to the very last day of May before losing their 20th game of the season. They lead the majors with 40 wins — for all the winning the Dodgers have been doing of late, Los Angeles is at 38 — and took the series against the Reds despite the L, so the more important thing here is that it’s looking like Acuña is back. The Angels lost to the Rays 5-2 on Sunday, but it could have been much worse. Look at left fielder Jose Siri out there robbing Tampa Bay of a grand slam, for instance. Wait a second. Computer, enhance. Alright, Siri saved four runs and the outfield buffet from certain doom. And while it would have been hilarious to see whatever disaster came out of a baseball striking a bunch of food plates at high velocity, more important is that lunch was salvaged. Maybe next time don’t line it up near where baseballs might land, though. Credit to the ump’s reflexes on that one. The Giants crushed the Rockies, 19-6, and the performance that stood out the most in all that scoring was that of right fielder Jung Hoo Lee. He had his first-ever five-hit game, singling in the first to give the Giants their first lead of the day, doubling in the fifth, singling again later in the fifth — San Francisco scored seven runs in that frame — singling again in the seventh and then hitting another single in the eighth. In between that first hit and the rest of the game were 18 other Giants runs, including four on one swing from shortstop Willy Adames, which made it 11-3 in the fifth and made this game feel out of reach for the Rockies. Giants’ starter Robbie Ray didn’t even pitch particularly well — he went just four innings and allowed seven baserunners and three runs — but Tanner Gordon gave Colorado even less to work with over three innings with four runs allowed, and then the bullpen gave up another 15. Zach Agnos wore the bulk of them thanks to that seven-run fifth, but the next two pitchers after him each gave up three, and Brett Sullivan allowed another two to close things out, as well. It has not been a great season for the Rockies to this point, but seeing what was already the league’s worst run differential get that much worse all in one afternoon is rough. And to the Giants, too, who are all of 1.5 up on the basement-dwelling Rockies in the NL West right now. A seven-run inning is big, but the Yankees did the Giants one better. In fact, they scored 10 runs in the third inning against the Athletics in the third inning on Sunday before an out was recorded. New York would pile on another three runs to make it a 13-run third inning, which included DH Ben Rice hitting a triple and a double in the same frame. Just as incredible as this 13-run outburst is that it was the only inning in which the Yankees scored. They were up 13-3 at this point, and ended up defeating the A’s, 13-8: the Athletics tried chipping away at the lead over the remaining innings, but despite the Yankees seemingly giving them plenty of opportunities to catch up, the 10-run deficit that stood after the third proved too much. Jacob Misiorowski looked impressive in 2025, but he also didn’t have the greatest command nor control of his high-end velocity, resulting in a 4.36 ERA as a rookie despite striking out 11.9 batters per nine: Miz still walked 4.2 per nine and allowed eight homers in 66 innings, so there were clear weaknesses to his game. Good luck finding those weaknesses in 2026. The 24-year-old right-hander, who stands an imposing 6-foot-7 even before he steps on the rubber, has found both command and control. He has more than halved last season’s home run rate, is down to 2.4 walks per nine, and has increased his strikeout rate to 13.7 per nine: he’s striking out just under 40% of the hitters he faces. The result? A May to remember. Seriously, though, what are you supposed to do when he can locate 102 with pinpoint control all of a sudden? Same as the rest of us, apparently. What a month for Misiorowski.