Last Night In Baseball: No One Can Slow Down Alex Bregman And The Cubs

A three-homer game. Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani get it done. The Blue Jays are still right in this thing. Wednesday’s MLB action provided all that and much more. Here are all the best moments from last night in Major League Baseball: The Nationals aren’t officially out of the wild-card race at this point by any means, but the Cubs have certainly made things more difficult. Chicago won the series against the Nats on Wednesday, and can go for the three-game sweep on Thursday, thanks to third baseman Alex Bregman’s career first. Bregman hit three homers and drove in seven runs in the process, while adding a pair of walks in his other two plate appearances. The first dinger came in the fifth inning, and put Chicago up, 4-1. The second long ball was the very next inning, a 383-foot shot off reliever Yovany Cruz that made it a 9-4 ballgame. Bregman’s third homer of the game and 16th of the season came in the eighth off Trevor Williams, on a 91 mph four-seam fastball that was up and away — Bregman pulled that to left-center, 394 feet away, and Chicago was up 12-5. While Bregman had an uninspiring start to the season — and his five-year, $175 million free agent contract signed this past offseason — he’s picked it up and looked like a star since mid-July. In the game before the All-Star break, Bregman went 3-for-5 with a homer and four RBIs to raise his season OPS to .696; it’s now .758, thanks to batting .327/.397/.644 with eight of his 16 homers in the last 25 games. He’s now a well-above average hitter for the year at third, and combined with his defense, has already accumulated 3.6 wins above replacement despite the slow start. No wonder the Cubs have turned things around and look like a World Series contender. Meanwhile, the Nationals fell to 59-63, and are five games behind the Diamondbacks and Phillies, who are tied for the final wild-card spot. There’s plenty of season left for Washington to turn things around, but it’s slipped into that tier of sub-.500 teams, behind the six clubs with a winning record vying for the same three wild-cards. One of those teams aiming for a wild-card berth is the Padres, and San Diego is proving it belongs in that fight. Robbie Ray, acquired at the deadline, started the game for the Padres against the MLB-best Brewers, and Ray went four innings allowing two runs before San Diego handed things over to its bullpen. The Padres scored their first run on a solo homer by shortstop Xander Bogaerts in the third inning, but then their bats went silent until the eighth, when a footrace between second baseman Jake Cronenworth and reliever Aaron Ashby resulted in a second run and tied game. The game stayed tied and went to extras thanks to this grab out in center by Garrett Mitchell, who had entered earlier as a pinch-hitter and then stuck around. Milwaukee would actually take the lead in the top of the 11th, when catcher Gary Sánchez drove in his second run of the day on a double — he had gone yard in the second for the Brewers’ first RBI of the day, as well. Center fielder Jackson Merrill would tie the game with a sac fly in the bottom of the frame, and while that would be the second out of extras, the remaining baserunner, pinch-runner Sung-Mon Song, would steal second while catcher Luis Campusano was at bat. Campusano would then drive Song in on a liner to right, and San Diego would win. That marked a sweep of the Brewers and the Padres’ fifth win in a row, to bring its record to 65-57. The W snapped a three-way tie for the last two NL wild-card slots, giving San Diego sole possession of the second. The Padres aren’t a sure thing by any means in a race this tight, but the lineup is hitting like it was always supposed to, and the rotation actually has pitchers in it now after the trade deadline, with former All-Star Joe Musgrove set to make his season debut sooner than later after missing all of 2025 recovering from Tommy John, and 2026 to this point recovering from a torn flexor tendon. There’s at least room for some hope, which is a better place than San Diego was a couple of months ago. The Rays have completed a 9-0 road trip, tying the franchise’s longest road winning streak, thanks to sweeping the Athletics in Sacramento. Second baseman Richie Palacios got Tampa Bay on the board in the second with a line drive to left… …but it was the four-run fourth that sealed the deal for the Rays, punctuated by this three-run homer by newcomer Liam Hicks. The catcher was acquired at the trade deadline from the Marlins, and all he’s done is mash since changing zip codes. The Rays would win, 8-4, and are now in line to get to 75 wins before anyone else in the AL reaches 70: they are the only American League team with a winning percentage over .600, and with Milwaukee losing again, now have the top winning percentage in MLB at .617. The Dodgers also swept the opposition in their most recent series, so they seem to be back on track. Los Angeles defeated the Royals, 4-2, thanks to 6 ⅓ strong innings out of starter Eric Lauer, but also the continued resurgence of shortstop Mookie Betts. Betts’ OPS was at its highest point in the summer in early July, but he slumped a bit to end the month. He’s been hot the last seven games, however, batting .423 with a 1.218 OPS, and hit his second homer of that stretch to tie things up 1-1 on Wednesday. Shohei Ohtani might not be a two-way player right now while he nurses a knee issue, but the bat is still there: his 27th homer of the year came on the first pitch he saw in the third inning, and gave the Dodgers a 3-2 lead. That would prove to be the game-winner, though, Los Angeles added another run on a on a dinger by catcher Hunter Feduccia in the fifth. With the Brewers getting swept by the Padres, the Dodgers are now just one back of Milwaukee for the best record in the NL. Just like the Nationals aren’t out of it yet, it’s too early to count out the Mariners. But that doesn’t mean Seattle isn’t trying to get knocked out of contention: it lost its sixth game in a row on Wednesday, to fall to 56-65 — nine games under .500 is a season-worst. Everything started promising enough, with a pair of first-inning homers and another in the third propelling the Mariners to a 4-1 lead over the Yankees, but New York would not take long to respond. Right fielder Spencer Jones laced a two-run double in the third to left to score catcher Austin Wells and DH Ben Rice, cutting the lead to 4-3, and then repeated the trick in the fifth to tie the game up, 5-5. Center fielder Trent Grisham would hit his 14th homer of the season in the seventh to give the Yankees a 6-5 lead, and then, in the eighth, make it 10-5 New York with his 15th blast. That would end up being the final score, and the Yankees are now one W away from sweeping the four-game set against Seattle. The Mariners’ hopes aren’t on life support just yet, but they are 5.5 back in a division where the leading team is just two games over .500, and are staring up at eight other teams in the wild-card standings, including multiple clubs that sold at the deadline. So there’s that to consider. One of those teams that sold at the deadline also did a bit of buying — the Blue Jays. And it’s tough to argue with their decision to not go all-in on selling, considering that Toronto now sits just 1.5 games back of a wild-card spot after stopping the red-hot Red Sox in their tracks: Boston won 27 of 30 games before losing a weekend series to the Athletics and now three in a row to the Jays, and Toronto has a chance at a four-game sweep on Thursday. This one was tied 1-1 in the eighth, but then the Blue Jays’ bats woke up. DH Kazuma Okamoto singled on a liner to left to give Toronto a 2-1 lead… …then the Jays just kept scoring. A bases-loaded walk, a sac fly and a two-run double later, and it was 6-1, Toronto. Boston would respond with a three-run ninth, but it wasn’t enough: the Jays got the dub, and last year’s AL champs are within shouting distance of a postseason spot. The Cardinals won against the Phillies on Wednesday, giving St. Louis the series victory, as well, and got there with strong showings from starter Kyle Leahy — five innings, six strikeouts, no walks and one run allowed — and first baseman Alec Burleson, who went 2-for-3 with a run and three RBIs in the 7-1 win. Also deserving of a shout out, though, is this catch by Jordan Walker in right field. You hear a lot more about his bat, as that helped him to his first All-Star Game in 2026, but Walker timed this extension just right and made a damn impressive catch for his trouble. The first start for Luis Castillo with the White Sox didn’t go so well, but the trade deadline acquisition looked fantastic out there in his first home start for Chicago. The right-hander produced a season-high 10 strikeouts against his other former team, the Reds, allowing just one hit, two walks and no runs across seven innings of work. A third-inning solo home run by catcher Drew Romo proved to be the game winner since Chicago didn’t allow any runs on the day, and shortstop Chase Meidroth added plenty of insurance an inning later with his 12th long ball of the year. The White Sox are now 62-57 and 3.5 up on the Twins in the AL Central, which is just slightly ahead of last year’s pace through Aug. 12, when Chicago was 24.5 games back and just 44-76.