Reds sweep into a wild card<\/p>\n
The Reds<\/a> have looked dead more than once in 2025, but two things happened over the weekend that have them not only back in it, but in possession of a wild card spot. For one, they swept the Cubs<\/a> over the weekend, with Sunday\u2019s victory a 1-0 win over Chicago. Gavin Lux<\/a> drove in a run in the third, and then it was on the pitching the rest of the way.<\/p>\n Starter Andrew Abbott wasn\u2019t at his very best, lasting just 4.2 innings with all of 2 strikeouts over 86 pitches, but he managed to scatter 5 hits and 1 walk and avoid giving up any runs. The Reds\u2019 bullpen handled business from there on out, giving up just one more hit \u2014 and more importantly, no runs \u2014 to Chicago the rest of the way.<\/p>\n The W gave the Reds their 80th win of the season, and, per Baseball Reference, bumped their postseason odds up to 31%. As for that second thing? Time to shift to perspective, to\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026the Mets’ fall<\/p>\n The Mets<\/a> might have the same record as the Reds, at 80-76, but they do not have possession of the third and final wild card spot in the National League. That\u2019s because Cincinnati has the tiebreaker, and as a result New York is chasing a playoff spot for the first time since April 4.\u00a0<\/p>\n They have just six games left \u2014 three against the Cubs, who have already clinched a postseason spot, and then three against the Marlins<\/a> to finish the season. The Reds are in a similar situation, with one tough opponent and one they should beat, only in the reverse order: they take on the Pirates<\/a> before facing the Brewers<\/a>. While Milwaukee is MLB\u2019s best this year, they might also be resting players a bit and setting their rotation for the postseason by the final weekend of the year, too. Not that they would no longer be a threat to the Reds by any means, but it\u2019s the kind of subtle change that could make all the difference in the end in a race this tight.<\/p>\n New York won on Friday against the Nationals<\/a>, but Saturday saw them lose thanks to an extra-innings inside-the-park home run\u2026<\/p>\n And on Sunday? Well. Jacob Young<\/a> deserves his own section for that one. But to put a bow on this one, the Mets didn\u2019t win that game, either, against the second-worst team in the National League, and now they find themselves without possession of a postseason spot.<\/p>\n Just don\u2019t hit it to Young<\/p>\n Here\u2019s that aforementioned Jacob Young spotlight. We have seen plenty of catches bobbled and then recovered before they hit the ground in 2025, but Young\u2019s grab from Sunday trumps them all. Why? Because he used his\u00a0foot to keep the ball catchable. It\u2019s difficult to see from the initial angle\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026but once you get that side view, you see that he not only caught the ball and had it pop out of his glove without it touching the wall, but he also kicked it back up in the air and kept it from hitting the ground, too, giving the center fielder a second chance at making the out.<\/p>\n Even funnier \u2014 well, not if you\u2019re a Mets fan \u2014 is that Young had another great catch later on, but it looks pretty ho-hum in comparison given his previous one is one of the best of the entire season.<\/p>\n The Nationals ended up winning 3-2 in a game where Young did this to the Mets \u2014 obviously, more went on in the game than this, and more went\u00a0wrong for New York than this, but it\u2019s pretty easy to point a finger at Young here in terms of short-term damage done to the Mets\u2019 playoff hopes.<\/p>\n Trout\u2019s 400th<\/p>\n Mike Trout<\/a> had a bit of a power outage to get from career home run 398 to 399, as he\u2019s struggled a bit with a bone bruise in his knee, but he jumped to 400 in eight more games. Trout is just the 59th player in MLB history to get to 400 career homers, and he made this one a titanic shot \u2014 this thing went 485 feet.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even better is that Trout got the ball back from the fan who caught it, in exchange for something pure: a game of catch with Trout himself.<\/p>\n How many home runs will Trout end up with in his career? It\u2019s tough to guess, but just to give a sense of difficulty and rarity, Giancarlo Stanton<\/a>\u2019s 450th over the weekend made him just the 41st player to hit that many. All of 28 players have ever hit 500 \u2014 just 15 have reached 550. Trout is 34, and often dealing with injury or missing time. Maybe we\u2019ll all be blessed with some better health and get to see him hit massive shots like that one more often in the future, but if not, getting to 400 is quite the feat regardless.<\/p>\n Raleigh passes Griffey<\/p>\n Cal Raleigh<\/a> has done it: he\u2019s set another new homer record in a year already full of them. His 57th blast of the year passed Ken Griffey Jr. for the most in a single season in Mariners<\/a> history \u2014 Griffey pulled that off twice with Seattle, in 1997 and 1998.<\/p>\n And then Raleigh hit another one for good measure, too. His season isn\u2019t over just because Griffey is in his rear view, you know.<\/p>\n Raleigh has six games left \u2014 including three against Rockies<\/a>\u2019 pitching \u2014 to push this even further. His 58th homer was a notable one, in that it put him in a six-way tie for 12th-place all-time on the single-season leaderboard, with Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg, Ryan Howard, Aaron Judge<\/a> and Mark McGwire. One more puts him in a tie for the 10th-most with Babe Ruth and Giancarlo Stanton \u2014 four more ties him for the single-season AL record that Judge set in 2022. It would take one hell of a week to get there, but again: Rockies pitching.<\/p>\n Guardians catch the Astros<\/p>\n The Guardians<\/a> had their 10-game winning streak snapped over the weekend, but the Tigers<\/a> couldn\u2019t capitalize on that: Detroit has lost six games in a row now, meaning that they are just one game up on Cleveland before the two face off for a three-game series that begins on Tuesday. The Guardians are sitting in a tie for the final wild card in the AL with the Astros<\/a>, as both teams are 84-72. Like with the Reds and Mets situation, the Guardians hold the tiebreaker over the Astros \u2014 as of this moment, they are in the postseason. But there are six games to play, and things can shake out a number of ways before we know that for sure.<\/p>\n Things can get complicated for Houston even if the Tigers end up ceding the AL Central the Guardians \u2014 Detroit controls the tiebreaker with Houston, so if they don\u2019t have a straight-up better record than one of the Guardians or Tigers before this week ends, then they miss the postseason. The Guardians have three against the Tigers and then three against the Rangers<\/a>, while Detroit faces the Red Sox<\/a> \u2014 who as of Monday morning have the same 85-71 record as the Tigers \u2014 to finish their season. The Astros wrap against the Athletics<\/a> and Angels<\/a>, two teams that might not have playoff aspirations but can certainly play the role of spoiler. It\u2019s going to be a wild last week of the season for these three clubs\u2026 and four, if the Red Sox can\u2019t get some much-needed separation going to get them out of being any further involved in this three-team mess than the schedule dictates.<\/p>\n One thing we do know for sure? Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez<\/a> made it to the 30 home run, 30 steals club again, for the third time.\u00a0<\/p>\n Watch out for him reaching the 300-300 mark for his career in 2026 \u2014\u00a0just eight players<\/a> before Ram\u00edrez have ever managed to get to that point, and he\u2019s at 285 long balls and 283 steals.<\/p>\n
![\"Major](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/MLB.vresize.160.160.medium.0.png\")
Get more from the Major League Baseball Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is always baseball happening \u2014 almost too much baseball for one person to follow themselves. Don’t worry,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-174235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}