Head on a swivel, party people: For it's Friday the 13th. The day started off as freaky as it could, with an afternoon game in Wrigley being one of the more crazy games of the year. A huge AL Central battle was postponed after a few innings. In actual night action, we saw a big outcome in the NL East, some big home runs, the Dodgers get to Thor, the Cardinals humiliate the Brewers and much more.

All that and more in our nightly roundup. Let's get to it. 

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Baseball scores for Friday, Sept. 13


Nico Hoerner's huge Wrigley Field debut 

The Cubs recently called up top position prospect Nico Hoerner -- the 24th overall pick last year out of Stanford -- and he was promptly thrust into the mix. The Cubs are of course without star shortstop Javier Baez because of a thumb injury, and fallback Addison Russell has proved to be inadequate so far in 2019. That led to Hoerner's promotion. 

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He entered the season as a top-100 overall prospect on most lists, and he put up solid numbers at Double-A Tennessee earlier this year. Through the first four games of his big-league career, Hoerner has put up a strong slash line of .333/.412/.467 while spending 35 1/3 defensive innings at shortstop. He appeared in front of the home crowd in Chicago for the first time against the Pirates on Friday, and he promptly delivered a thrill: 

Yep, that was the first pitch Hoerner ever saw at Wrigley Field, and he turned it around for a 411-foot homer to center. Hey, why not another angle on things: 

That blast also put the Cubs back in front after Jon Lester got knocked around in the top of the first. 

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This was only the beginning of a wild game that would see 25 runs on 29 hits. Even more amazing, scoring only happened in four innings and only once -- a one-run Pirates eighth -- would a team score exactly one run in an inning. The Cubs scored five in the first, five in the third -- including an Anthony Rizzo grand slam -- and seven in the fifth after the Pirates had trimmed the lead to 10-7. Hoerner also became the first Cubs player ever to have multiple four-RBI games in his first five games with the team. 

The Cubs could only gain ground on one of its NL Central combatants ...  

Goldschmidt goes off, Cards destroy Brewers

This is probably the biggest series of the season so far for the Brewers and they did not show up in the opener. It was actually a scoreless tie until the third inning, when Cardinals first baseman Paul Goldschmidt took over with a grand slam. 

He'd later add a three-run homer to make this into a laugher. 

The Cardinals maintain their four-game lead over the Cubs while moving their magic number down to 12. Take note that the teams still have a whopping seven head-to-head games remaining. 

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Meantime, the Brewers fall to one game back of the Cubs in the NL wild card race. The Cubs are now only 2 1/2 games behind the Nats for the top NL wild card, so there are playoff implications all over the NL Central. 

Braves top Nationals, have just about put them away

The Braves beat the Nationals again on Friday, this time around they beat Max Scherzer while Mike Soroka held the Nationals offense to just one hit in six scoreless innings. It was a fine illustration of just how much better the Braves are. 

We've known for a while that the Braves were probably going to win the NL East, but taking three of four from the Nats last weekend and then winning Friday night has sealed the deal. The Braves' lead is now 9 1/2 games, and the magic number is down to six with 13 Braves' games to go. Even a collapse probably doesn't matter. Just six Braves wins and Nationals losses combined means the Braves have repeated as NL East champs. 

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Springer clutch HR narrows Astros' magic number

The Astros went to the ninth inning in Kansas City tied with the lowly Royals because, well, that's what happens in baseball sometimes. They would break the tie with a Springer Dinger. George Springer's clutch bomb can be viewed right here: 

As noted, that's a new career high at 35, even though Springer has only played in 111 games. 

The A's won against the Rangers, but the Astros were still able to trim their magic number to seven. They have a 7 1/2 game lead, so while this isn't the NL East, it's pretty much over. A good rule of them is when the magic number is lower than the deficit, it would take a collapse to not happen. 

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Arenado hits 40th homer

Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado homered early in Friday's game, marking his 40th of the year. 

This is the third time in his career he's hit 40 homers, joining only Vinny Castilla, Eddie Mathews and Mike Schmidt as the only third baseman in baseball history to hit 40 homers three times or more. He's got an outside shot to make a run at the franchise record, too, which is 49 (Todd Helton and Larry Walker), though he'd have to go nuts with the Rockies having just 14 games left. 

Tigers have leg up for first overall draft pick

Who would've thought heading into the night we'd have a subhead about the worst game on the slate, right? The Orioles and Tigers played in Comerica Park and with the Orioles win, they now have a 4 1/2 game lead over the Tigers to avoid having the worst overall record in baseball this season. The Tigers have 16 games left, including three this series so I suppose there's enough time for things to turn, but it's hard to count on the Tigers to win enough games to make up a 4 1/2 game deficit.  They only win 29 percent of the time.  

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