{"id":778759,"date":"2026-07-04T15:25:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T15:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/778759\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T15:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T15:25:09","slug":"the-opener-chapman-caminero-ohtani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/778759\/","title":{"rendered":"The Opener: Chapman, Caminero, Ohtani"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two walkoffs in as many nights have put the Guardians a game ahead of the White Sox in the AL Central race.\u00a0 After Brayan Rocchio<\/a>\u2018s two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth sealed a 6-5 victory on Thursday, Kahlil Watson<\/a> was the hero on Friday with a 10th-inning walkoff single and a 4-3 Guards win.<\/p>\n

1. Aroldis captures reliever K\u2019s record<\/p>\n

Aroldis Chapman<\/a> earned his 17th save of the season in locking down a 5-2 Red Sox win over the Angels yesterday, and Chapman\u2019s strikeout of Denzer Guzman<\/a> sealed a bit of Major League history.\u00a0 It was the 1364th strikeout of Chapman\u2019s career, breaking a tie with Hoyt Wilhelm for the most strikeouts ever recorded by a relief pitcher.\u00a0 The record had stood since Wilhelm\u2019s retirement following the 1972 season, and after tying the mark last Saturday, Chapman\u2019s next appearance didn\u2019t come until last night.<\/p>\n

2. Caminero, Rays keep streaking<\/p>\n

The Rays extended their win streak to nine games with Friday\u2019s 3-1 victory over the Astros, with Junior Caminero<\/a>\u2018s solo homer in the seventh inning standing as the game\u2019s winning run.\u00a0 The red-hot Caminero has 25 home runs this year, with 10 of those big flies coming in his last 10 games.\u00a0 This power surge helped Caminero win AL Player of the Month honors in June, and Tampa Bay will send Drew Rasmussen<\/a> (June\u2019s AL Pitcher of the Month) to the hill today in a big pitching matchup with Houston\u2019s Hunter Brown<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3. Ohtani dealing with biceps issue<\/p>\n

Shohei Ohtani<\/a> allowed three earned runs over six innings (and 110 pitches) in Friday\u2019s 4-3 Dodgers win over the Padres, but eyebrows were raised when Miguel Rojas<\/a> pinch-hit for Ohtani in the seventh inning.\u00a0 Postgame, L.A. manager Dave Roberts told The Athletic\u2019s Fabian Ardaya<\/a> and other reporters that Ohtani was dealing with some minor biceps tightness that will keep the two-way superstar out of Saturday\u2019s starting lineup.\u00a0 Roberts also didn\u2019t rule out the possibility that Ohtani won\u2019t pitch again before the All-Star break, though both the skipper and Ohtani himself downplayed the severity of the biceps problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two walkoffs in as many nights have put the Guardians a game ahead of the White Sox in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":778760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-778759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}