Happy Star Wars day in many ballparks across the country. May the fourth be with you, and all that noise. Saturday brought us a full slate, with most of the games coming under the lights. As for headliners, the Cardinals and Cubs played a thriller in Wrigley, the Twins stayed smoking, Carlos Santana keyed a Cleveland comeback, and they played 18 innings in Milwaukee. That, of course, is not all.  

Select games can be streamed regionally via fuboTV (Try for free). For more on what channel each game is on, click here.

Baseball schedule/scores for Saturday, May 4

Cubs clinch key series with wild win over Cards

The Cubs have won the first two games of the three-game series against the Cardinals in Wrigley. Their Saturday win pulls them to within a half-game of first place in the NL Central. In this one, the Cubs at one point were down 5-1 and per win expectancy had barely a 10 percent chance of winning the game. Taylor Davis, however, tied the score with one swing: 

That, as noted, is Davis' first career home run in the bigs, and it came at the expense of Michael Wacha and his cutter. Wacha's now struggled in each of his two starts since returning from the IL. As for that homer, it puts Davis in rare company: 

Thanks to some quality relief work on both sides (the Chicago bullpen logged five shutout innings), the score stayed tied until the eighth, when Javier Baez faced John Brebbia, who came into this one with a 0.49 ERA for the season. Here's how that went: 

That was a 96-mph fastball at the top of the zone and on the outer third, but it wasn't a problem for Baez, who's now slugging .659 this season. There's really no place to pitch him, as Brebbia would now surely attest. Baez almost didn't get a chance to take that swing. On earlier pitch that same AB, Baez hit a fly ball to shallow right that Kolten Wong almost made a nifty sliding play on. He was unable to haul it in, though, and the umpires undertook a review to determine whether Wong made contact in fair territory. It was close, but the call stood. That of course gave Baez the second chance he needed. 

For the Cardinals, Jose Martinez homered, doubled, and just missed a second dinger. Afterward, though, everyone was talking about this bizarre sequence in the top of the ninth: 

Martinez was attempting to call time for several seconds -- well before Pedro Strop was in his delivery and for longer than is shown in the footage above -- but plate ump Larry Vanover declined to grant time (this despite earlier granting time to a Cubs hitter after Wacha was already coming to the plate). On top of that, the pitch might not have been a strike as called. On the other hand, if you're Martinez and time isn't granted after, say, five seconds of asking for it, you need to get ready to hit instead of stepping out of the box. In any event, what you see above probably didn't alter the final outcome in any way, but it was surely weird. 

The only downside for the Cubs is that Yu Darvish once again struggled. After allowing five earned in four innings (and walking five), his ERA for the season now stands at 5.79. All of that is outweighed by the fact that the Cubs have now won six in a row, boast the best run differential in the National League, and now have fewer losses than St. Louis. 

Twins surge continues

For the 11th time in the last 15 games, the Minnesota Twins were victorious on Saturday. The formula in this one was familiar. The Twins pounded three home runs and got an excellent outing from Jake Odorizzi. 

Odorizzi had a disastrous outing his second time out this season. The following four starts, though, saw him pitch to a 2.35 ERA in 23 innings. Saturday was his fifth outing since then and he went six scoreless innings, giving up just two hits. He did walk four, but he struck out eight. He's really in a groove. 

The whole team is, too. As noted, they are hot, but it goes beyond that. Before this week, it could be argued that they had been beating up on weak teams. I mean, that's not really too harsh. It was the simple reality. Six of their last seven wins had come against the Orioles, for example. 

This week, everything changed. They hosted the Astros for four games before heading to Yankee Stadium. So far this week, they are 4-2. That's exceptional, and the Twins will maintain at least a two-game lead in the AL Central. 

On the Yankees' end, J.A. Happ has been more bad than good this season. After seven scoreless innings last time out against the Giants, he coughed up four runs on seven hits in 5 2/3 innings on Saturday. He was saved from a three-run homer by a Cameron Maybin robbery at the wall, too, but even with that fortune his ERA is 4.93 this season. With James Paxton now on the DL, Happ being broken would not bode well for the Yankees rotation moving forward. 

Braun paces Brewers' marathon win

By innings, it was the longest game in Miller Park. The Brewers prevailed over the Mets in 18 innings despite being down by a run to start the bottom half of that final frame. The Milwaukee bullpen allowed only on run in 12 2/3 innings, but the biggest story was the night veteran Ryan Braun had at the plate: 

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Ryan Braun
MIL • LF • #8
vs. NYM, 5/4/19
AB8
H6
2B2
RBI2
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That's the first six-hit game of Braun's career, and he's the first player in Brewers history to register six hits with a walk-off in one game. Speaking of walk-off, here's that: 

Braun entered this game with a 2019 slash line of .226/.274/.453, and six hits later he's now batting .263/.306/.491. Curiously, he didn't score a run on Saturday night. One more nugget: 

The Brewers are now 7-2 this season in games decided by one run. 

On the Mets' side of things, Pete Alonso hit his 10th home run of the season. Robinson Cano came in needing only one knock for career hit No. 2,500, but he wound up going 0 for 7. 

Santana's Cleveland renaissance keeps going

Coming into this season veteran slugger Carlos Santana, now 33, seemed to be trapped in a pattern of decline. Back in 2016, Santana posted a strong OPS+ of 123. In 2017, that figure fell to 112, and last year with the Phillies it slipped further to 104. Back with the Indians in 2018, though, Santana coming into Saturday's home game against the Mariners boasted an OPS+ of 142. Then he padded those numbers with a clutch blast in the ninth: 

That two-out, 411-foot blast in the eighth as you see turned a one-run deficit into a one-run lead. Santana has long been a disciplined hitter in terms of walks and strikeouts, and that's still the case in 2019. What has changed is that Santana is hitting the ball harder. His average exit velocity of 95.1 is in the top 2.0 percent of the league. His hard-hit rate of 56.1 percent is also in the top 2.0 percent of the league. All of that bodes well when it comes the prospect of his continuing to produce at a high level. Given how badly the Indians have struggled to score runs this season, he'll need to do just that. 

As for the Mariners, they've now lost six straight, and that 13-2 start to the season seems increasingly long ago. 

Highlight(s) of the day: One homer and one robbery in Cincy

Two notable moments from the Reds' runaway win over the Giants on Saturday. First, here's the first career home run of Reds elite prospect Nick Senzel: 

Yep, there's 23-year-old Senzel going the other way for his first career home run in his second career game. Coming up through the minors Senzel tallied 28 home runs, 77 doubles, and a .508 SLG in 239 games, so he's indeed got pop. 

Elsewhere in this one, Giants fly-catcher Kevin Pillar performed his latest outfield miracle. Dig it: 

All right, the lame-wads among us will point out that Pillar appeared to overrun the ball a bit and might not have needed to scale the entire wall in order to make that catch. To that the rest of rise up and shout in unison: Whatever, man. The 30-year-old Pillar hasn't really hit this season, before or after the trade out of Toronto, but he's still capable of the jaw-dropping snare.

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