It's a Friday, which means a full slate of MLB action -- even a day game at Wrigley Field. Keep it here for all the latest news, scores, and notes from across the league.
Friday's scores
- Cubs 6, Giants 2 (box score)
- Pirates 8, Cardinals 1 (box score)
- Blue Jays 6, Phillies 5 (box score)
- Yankees 2, Angels 1 (box score)
- Tigers 5, White Sox 4 (box score)
- Orioles 2, Rays 0 (box score)
- Red Sox 6, Braves 2 (box score)
- Nationals 9, Marlins 5 (box score)
- Astros 11, Indians 2 (box score)
- Rangers 8, Royals 4 (box score)
- Brewers 4, Mets 3 in 10 innings (box score)
- Rockies 5, Reds 4 (box score)
- Diamondbacks 7, Athletics 1 (box score)
- Mariners 2, Twins 1 (box score)
- Dodgers 4, Padres 1 (box score)
Yanks, Halos gives us lots to see
The Yankees and Angels played a pretty compelling game on Friday night in the Bronx in their series opener. Luis Severino and Andrew Heaney each pitched exceptionally well. Among the highlights? Aaron Judge's arm.
You know Judge can hit, right? Coming into the big weekend series against the Angels, he boasted a slash line of .284/.412/.568 with 13 homers. That, of course, comes on the heels of his 2017, in which he finished second in the AL MVP balloting and authored one of the greatest rookie seasons ever.
What's overlooked is Judge is also a good fielder. The eye test backs this up, as do the advanced metrics. Part of his defensive package is a plus throwing arm, which he displayed in Friday night, to the regret of Kole Calhoun ...
Aaron Judge has a CANNON pic.twitter.com/K6DfaiDMpE
— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) May 26, 2018
That was on the money, and it saved the Yanks a run. He hits, he fields, and he runs the bases better than you'd think based on his hulking appearance. Speaking of those breadth of skills ...
Aaron Judge has thrown a baseball 100.5 MPH (his recent assist) and hit a baseball 121 MPH. I doubt too many players in the history of baseball have done that.
— Daren Willman (@darenw) May 26, 2018
Oh, and Judge wasn't done hosing runners ...
When will they learn? pic.twitter.com/o5vH4ql7r5
— MLB (@MLB) May 26, 2018
And speaking of superstars making noise in this one, here's a Mike Trout special ...
Fastball over the plate? @miketrout doesn’t miss. pic.twitter.com/zG6fNgAzuE
— MLB (@MLB) May 26, 2018
That's an opposite-field blast that went second deck -- no easy feat. That's also Trout's 16th blast of the season, which temporarily tied him with Mookie Betts for the MLB lead.
Anyhow, our game was tied in the eighth when 21-year-old Yanks phenom Gleyber Torres came to the plate. Here's what happened ...
Mercy. That's 95 mph, low and outside, and Torres sent it to the opposite field at 102 mph off the bat. The 21-year-old Torres is now batting .333/.393/.646 in this, his rookie campaign, with nine home runs in 108 plate appearances. His Friday night oppo taco also occasioned a bit of AL history ...
Gleyber Torres (21 yrs, 163 days) is the youngest player in AL history to HR in 4 straight games.
— Katie Sharp (@ktsharp) May 26, 2018
The last player to homer in four straight as a 21-year-old? Torres' teammate Giancarlo Stanton in 2011, when he was a member of the NL's Marlins. Overall, Torres has homered in five out of his last six games. He's also now the youngest player in franchise history to hit nine homers in his first 28 career games.
So the 2-1 margin held up thanks to Aroldis Chapman, who recorded a four-out save (manager Aaron Boone summoned him to face Shohei Ohtani with two out in the eighth and the potential tying run on first). Chapman's final pitch of the game? It was a 90-mph changeup to whiff Martin Maldonado ...
And, now for something completely different....
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) May 26, 2018
Aroldis Chapman, 90mph Changeup. 🤔 pic.twitter.com/W6TaLjfOGP
Two more games in this series, folks.
The Cleveland bullpen has reached a new low
So here's what went right for the Indians on Friday night against Houston ...
- Corey Kluber was once again dominant and lowered his 2018 ERA to 2.17.
- Michael Brantley, who's raking this season, extended his MLB-best hit streak to 14 games.
- Francisco Lindor did this ...
Shoot for the moon -- even if you miss, you might still steal a hit. 🌝
— Cleveland Indians (@Indians) May 26, 2018
RT if you're inspired.#RallyTogether pic.twitter.com/WohCtToceD
All right. Now for the bad news. The Indians had a 2-0 lead over the reigning champs going into the eighth inning. Then here's how the much-maligned 2018 Cleveland bullpen fared ...
| PITCHERS | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | ERA | WHIP | FPTS |
| A. Miller (L, 1-3) (BS, 3) | 0.2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4.40 | 1.60 | -11.0 |
| C. Allen | 0.1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3.48 | 1.26 | -3.0 |
| D. Otero | 0.2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6.88 | 1.18 | 0.0 |
| O. Drake | 0.2 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7.94 | 1.76 | -11.0 |
| J. Tomlin | 0.1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7.83 | 1.62 | -2.0 |
Yep, the Indians' bullpen recorded eight outs but along the way gave up 11 runs. In all, 20 Houston batters came to the plate in the eighth and ninth. Said Indians bullpen now has an ERA of 6.23, and they've been tagged with 12 losses on the season. For context, the Yankees right how have 15 losses overall. Fortunately for the Tribe, they're in a pretty terrible division. Absent better relief, though, it's hard to imagine they'll be back in the playoffs.
Across the way, the Astros have now won fives games in a row, and for the season they boast an MLB-best plus-125 run differential.
Betts goes yard again
For a couple of hours on Friday night, Mike Trout had pulled even with Mookie Betts for the MLB lead in home runs. But then Betts pulled ahead with No. 17 of the season, this one against the Braves ...
Here is a tweet about Mookie reclaiming the HR lead. pic.twitter.com/oeJJcBnj6V
— Red Sox (@RedSox) May 26, 2018
Betts is now batting .361/.438/.761 on the year, and to hear most tell it he's the current leader in the AL MVP race. J.D. Martinez, Xander Bogaerts, and Mitch Moreland also homered in this one. For Martinez, it was his 16th. Last season, the Sox were last in the AL in homers, but thus far in 2018 they rank a strong second with 78 dingers through their first 52 games. Betts and Martinez have accounted for almost half of that total.
Walk-off walk in Wisconsin
The Mets got six strong innings from Noah Syndergaard on Friday in Milwaukee, and then in the ninth a Jose Bautista RBI single tied the game. In the tenth, though, A.J. Ramos walked a pair of batters to give the Brewers their NL-best 32nd win of the season ...
That ill-timed free pass drops the Mets to 8-13 for the month of May.
Paxton dominates again
The Mariners got back to 10 games above .500 with a tight win over the Twins. The win was thanks mostly to lefty ace James Paxton, who allowed one run over seven innings with 11 strikeouts against zero walks. He's now running a 3.10 ERA on the season with no unearned runs allowed and 90 strikeouts in 69 2/3 innings. Overall, he's struck out more than 30 percent of opposing batters in 2018. He's one of just 10 qualifiers have a strikeout percentage of at least 30.
Stripling still a Dodger savior
Man, what a savior 28-year-old right-hander Ross Stripling has been for the battered Dodger rotation this season. On Friday night, he suffocated the Padres by allowing one unearned run 6 2/3 innings. Along the way he struck out 10 without walking a batter. Which brings us to ...
Only @Dodgers pitchers in the live-ball era with 7+ strikeouts and 0 walks in 3 straight starts:
— Stats By STATS (@StatsBySTATS) May 26, 2018
Clayton Kershaw, 2015
Clayton Kershaw, 2016
Ross Stripling, last 3 starts#Dodgers
On the season, Stripling has a 1.74 ERA in five starts and 11 relief appearances. Without those valuable swing innings, the Dodgers' disappointing start would be even grimmer.
Musgrove sparkles in Pirates debut
The Pirates acquired righty Joe Musgrove this past offseason as part of the Gerrit Cole trade with the Astros. Thanks to a shoulder strain, Musgrove didn't make his Buccos debut until Friday night against the Cardinals. Suffice it to say, it was worth the wait ...
Those numbers are obviously impressive, but here's what's really striking ...
Making his @Pirates debut, Joe Musgrove tossed 7 shutout innings on just 67 pitches.
— Stats By STATS (@StatsBySTATS) May 26, 2018
Musgrove is the first pitcher to throw at least 7 innings on fewer than 70 pitches since Greg Maddux did so for the Dodgers on September 14, 2008.#LetsGoBucs
Not bad company there. Of those 67 pitches, Musgrove threw 50 strikes. That's one heck of a debut, to say the least.
The flip side of this is that the Cardinals' offense continues to struggle. They entered the night ranking ninth in the NL in OPS, and that figure obviously did not improve against Musgrove and the Pirates. What was expected to be a team strength for St. Louis has instead been its most glaring liability.
The underrated Hendricks delivers
The Cubs smothered the Giants on Friday thanks largely to the mound-based efforts of righty Kyle Hendricks ...
On the season, Hendricks now boasts an ERA of 3.16 in 62 2/3 innings with 51 strikeouts against 13 walks. Tellingly, that scaled to a full season would be one of Hendricks' weaker campaigns.
Maybe it's because he's a sinker-changeup guy who doesn't impress the radar guns, but it seems like Hendricks gets overlooked. We're talking about a pitcher who entered Friday's start with a career ERA+ of 136 (for some perspective, that matches Christy Mathewson's career mark). He's not really a workhorse, but Hendricks excels at run prevention. That, though, is pretty much the point of pitching.
D-Backs snap losing streak
The Diamondbacks ended a seven-game losing streak on Friday night with a win at home over the A's. Patrick Corbin allowed one run over seven innings and drove his seasonal ERA down to 2.47. On offense, Paul Goldschmidt enjoyed a multi-hit game for the first time since April 26. Nick Ahmed hit his seventh homer of the season (his career high in nine, by the way).
Red Sox DFA Hanley
The Red Sox designated first baseman Hanley Ramirez for assignment Friday morning. You can read more about that story here.
Quick hits
- The Rays on Friday traded RHP Alex Colome and OF Denard Span to the Mariners for a pair of young right-handers. Get the details here.
- Here's a look at how the Yankees might handle the roster crunch once 1B Greg Bird comes off the DL, probably this weekend.
- The Rays also acquired RHP Wilmer Font from the A's in exchange for RHP Peter Bayer.
- We took a look at where Ramirez might land next.
- Giants optioned LHP Josh Osich to the minors.
- Blue Jays optioned RHP Deck McGuire to the minors.
- Angels C Rene Rivera has undergone knee surgery and will miss the next four to six weeks.
- The Pirates have designated RHP George Kontos for assignment.
- The Angels have released INF Ryan Schimpf.
- Marlins 3B Martin Prado suffered a serious hamstring injury on Friday night and is likely to miss significant time.
