Last Night In Baseball: The Cubs Avoided Dropping Under .500… For Now

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: It’s been a rough road for the Cubs of late. Sure, there was the 10-game losing streak — it’s not great when you can basically cancel out an earlier 10-game winning streak, but hey, at least Chicago has had two of those this season — but the performance of the Cubs since the end of that stretch is also a significant issue. Chicago hasn’t quite rebounded: the Cubs are 6-8 in their 14 post-streak games, and had lost three games in a row and the first two of their series against the Rockies. “Had,” because Chicago was able to defeat Colorado on Thursday, avoiding a sweep while also keeping above .500 in the process —  the Cubs entered the game at 34-34, in danger of having a losing record for the first time since April 14. Crisis averted for now, but obviously Chicago is going to need to improve, fast, for the danger to actually dissipate. Center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong showed off his defense early — it’s not just that he has the range to make difficult catches look routine, but PCA also can make the grabs that are even tougher than that. In the top of the fourth, Crow-Armstrong would also kick off the rally that decided this game. He singled to right against Rockies’ starter Ryan Feltner, then stole second base. First baseman Michael Busch singled PCA to third, then left fielder Ian Happ walked to load the bases. Up came right fielder Seiya Suzuki, and he cleared the bases with one swing. An 89.7 mph slider, left up in the zone, and sent 400 feet to left. That would be all Chicago needed, but the Cubs would keep scoring. Busch singled in a run in the next inning, then Happ had a sac fly to make it 6-2, Chicago. Third baseman Alex Bregman — who has had a tough time getting going in the first season of a five-year, $175 million deal — launched a two-run homer in the seventh, as well, his sixth of the year. The Cubs would end up winning, 9-3, which moved them into a tie for third in the NL Central and allowed them to pick up games on both the Cardinals and Pirates, and half-a-game on the division-leading Brewers, who were not in action on Thursday. There’s still a lot of talent on this team, but it needs to get going, soon, or else Chicago is going to have a deeper hole to climb out of than the one it’s already in. Lucky for them, even with these struggles, the Cubs are just one game out of a wild-card spot thanks to their earlier success. It wasn’t all bad news for the Rockies on Thursday. Rookie center fielder Cole Carrigg, in his third game in the majors, hit his first big-league home run. It was a good one, too: Cubs’ starter Edward Cabrera left a slider middle-middle after throwing a ton of pitches down and out of the zone, and Carrigg launched it 418 feet to right field. Carrigg was a second-round pick of Colorado in the 2023 MLB Draft, and a year ago was considered a top-100 prospect in some circles. While he had a rough debut at Double-A last summer, Carrigg hit .338/.414/.529 in 57 games at Triple-A this season, earning him a call-up to the bigs. The Pacific Coast League is extremely hitter-friendly — the average hitter this year is at .270/.363/.430 — but considering Carrigg’s issues with making quality contact or hitting for any power a year ago, his results were still a positive step forward even with adjustments for that. It’s been a tough June so far for Juan Soto and the Mets, but both had wins on Thursday. New York’s star left fielder, whose OPS had dropped from .970 to .883 in the first 10 days of the month, launched a solo home run in the seventh inning against the Cardinals — it was his first homer of June, and also ended up being the game-winning hit. New York finally reached 30 wins by hanging on to this 5-4 lead, and sits at 30-38 at the bottom of the NL East. Not helping the Mets’ cause at all is the recent play of the Marlins, but we’ll get to that in a bit. Things won’t get any easier for New York this weekend: the Mets take on the MLB-leading Braves for a three-game series, and while Ronald Acuña Jr. is on the IL with a hamstring injury, the rest of Atlanta’s formidable team is still there. Tigers’ third baseman Colt Keith has hit homers in the majors before. Twenty-six of them, in fact, 13 per year. But for whatever reason in 2026, the 24-year-old had yet to go yard. That changed on Thursday during an 11-0 Tigers win where all but one hitter in Detroit’s starting lineup picked up at least one hit, and every one of them got on base and scored at least once. The entire dugout knew Keith hadn’t had a long ball yet, and the way you can tell is because of the reception that greeted him when he got back there post-homer. Or, rather, the lack of reception. The silent treatment: it’s an oldie, but a goodie. It was a bit of a win-lose situation for the Dodgers against the Pirates on Thursday, as two-way star Shohei Ohtani exited early due to knee inflammation, while starting pitcher Justin Wrobelski suffered a right hamstring contusion and had to leave, as well. Neither injury is serious, however, so the “win” part of that equation still gets to be the big focus. Before Ohtani left the game, he hit his second dinger in as many days, a 391-foot liner to right-center that came off his bat at nearly 108 mph. That was Ohtani’s 13th homer of the year: he’s now batting .305/.421/.543, leading the National League in both on-base percentage and OPS (.964). The Pirates finally scored in the bottom of the fifth, when they were already down 5-0 — that came on a solo home run by catcher Rafael Flores, his first in the majors. Pittsburgh would end up scoring four total in the fifth, but just couldn’t catch up before they ran out of game. The Dodgers ended up winning, 8-6, and took the series in the process. Still, the Pirates played Los Angeles well — the bullpen needs to get under control, however, as basically every negative thing that happened for Pittsburgh in these three games was because of the pen’s poor performance. Major free agent acquisition Pete Alonso hasn’t been quite what the Orioles hoped just yet. He’s on the field constantly, having played in every game for Baltimore so far, but the production has been hit or miss. On Thursday, though, Alonso managed to hit his 15th homer of the year to cap a six-run third inning. And he crushed it: 439 feet, off the bat at 110.6 mph and out of there in a hurry despite the high launch angle and distance. Alonso is now batting .243/.320/.455, which is productive and all — his OPS+ is at 118, comfortably above league-average — but he’s lagging well behind the pace of last season with the Mets, when he had an NL-leading 41 doubles to go with 38 homers, leading to a .524 slugging percentage. Thursday was a reminder of what he can do when he’s on his game, and it helped the O’s to a 7-5 win against the Mariners and series split. As promised, part of why the Mets not playing well of late has been even more of a problem than usual is because the team they are directly chasing — the fourth-place Marlins — keep on winning. Miami rattled off its fifth win in a row to sweep the Diamondbacks, and did it by coming out on top in a pitching duel. Merrill Kelly was great for Arizona, going six innings with just four hits and two runs allowed, but Tyler Phillips threw five shutout innings for the Marlins before handing it over to the bullpen, which got Miami the rest of the way in a 2-0 dub. All told, Marlins’ pitching went nine innings with three hits, three walks, no runs and 13 strikeouts — Kelly was great, but Miami’s pitchers were much better. The Marlins might be 11.5 back in the NL East, but sit just two back of a wild-card spot. Even better for them, the Diamondbacks were 4.5 up on Miami for one of those, but are now just 1.5 up after getting swept. Not exactly a great run for Arizona, however, the Marlins are a team it needs to beat, especially when there are already seven other teams ahead of the D-backs for a wild card at the moment. In mid-May, Corey Seager was in the midst of the worst slump of his career, and then ended up on the IL before it actually ended. He returned from the lower back inflammation that pushed him to the IL a week ago on June 5, and promptly ended the hitless streak by hitting his first home run in nearly a month. Since then, Seager hasn’t exactly been lighting it up like the old days, but he’s been significantly more productive than he was prior to his time away. The Rangers’ shortstop went yard again on Thursday, and is up to .238/.273/.524 since his return. Again, not great! But considering he didn’t have a hit at all for 27 at-bats and struck out 11 times in that stretch, and had to rest due to back problems, even a little bit of production should create some optimism. Just last year, Seager batted .271/.373/.487 in 102 games, helping him produce a six-win season by wins above replacement. The 32-year-old should still have plenty left in the tank, but he has to get right first. The homer did have meaning outside of Seager’s slow recovery, as well: it was the 230th long ball of his career, moving him out of a tie with Nomar Garciapparra for the 10th-most by a primary shortstop in MLB history, per Baseball Reference. Next up? Jimmy Rollins at 231. The Rangers would end up winning, 4-2, with Seager’s home run the eventual game-winner. Texas is back at .500 again, and just one game behind the Mariners in the AL West while sitting one up on the Athletics for a wild-card spot.