Last Night In Baseball: The Red Sox Are Inexplicably Approaching A Wild-Card Spot

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: On June 18, the Red Sox lost 4-3 to the Blue Jays. The L dropped Boston’s record to 29-43 — no team in the history of Major League Baseball had ever made the postseason after starting out with a record as bad as that one. And no team has made the postseason despite a 29-43 start yet, either, but suddenly, the Red Sox are poised to change that with a strong second half. Boston swept the White Sox for its sixth-straight win, and now sits 2.5 games back of a wild-card spot in the AL. How? Well, for one, the Sox are 14-5 since that June 18 defeat, which has pushed their record to 43-48. This team has also severely underperformed: Boston’s expected record, based on run differential, is 48-43, which would actually be good enough for the second AL wild-card right now. The Red Sox have also suffered a number of injuries to key players on top of the disappointing starts to the year for a whole bunch of healthy ones, which hasn’t helped matters at all — what this team is actually capable of has never really been on display, since it’s been months of the worst possible outcome for almost everyone in the lineup not named Willson Contreras. Boston won 2-1 on Thursday, and a score like that almost requires some quality defense. The Sox got it in left from Jarren Duran… …and in center from Ceddanne Rafaela. Both of those catches were in service of protecting a slim lead that arrived on the bat of third baseman Caleb Durbin. Durbin’s OPS was an abysmal .479 after an 0-for-2 performance on May 24. He didn’t play again until May 28, and has hit .297/.343/.578 with eight homers and 19 extra-base hits across the 36 games and 140 plate appearances since. Durbin no longer being a massive hole in the lineup has been a considerable help with Boston’s turnaround, and on Thursday very directly led to a W. Whether the Red Sox make the postseason or not remains to be seen, but that they are even within striking distance less a month after hitting what has, historically, been a point of no return is wild. If Boston plays like it was supposed to from the beginning from here on out… well, look at the AL right now. The Sox aren’t even .500 and are already just 2.5 back. You don’t have to stretch your imagination too much to see this working for them in the end. On Wednesday, Mike Trout returned from the IL and hit a homer, helping the Angels to a win over the Rangers. On Thursday, Texas got Wyatt Langford back from injury, and similarly had a hit worth celebrating. We’ll get to that, though: first, some context. Nathan Eovaldi was lights out for the Rangers for six innings, striking out 10 batters with one walk allowed while giving up one run and five hits. Then the seventh inning happened. Eovaldi came back out, but things started off wrong, as third baseman Denzer Guzman reached first on catcher interference, and then catcher Logan O’Hoppe walked. Left fielder Wade Meckler hit a single to drive in a run, and that was the day for Eovaldi. Except, he bequeathed two runners to reliever Peyton Gray, and Gray walked shortstop Zach Neto to load the bases. While Trout grounded into a force out at home, that was also the first out of the inning and the bases were still juiced. First baseman Nolan Schanuel hit a two-run single — 6-4, Rangers — then DH Jorge Soler drove in Trout with a knock. Another new pitcher came in to get the final out of the inning following a strikeout of second baseman Vaughn Grissom, but Tyler Alexander couldn’t avoid what now felt inevitable. Right fielder Jo Adell tied the game up with yet another single. This all ended up being merely setup for a dramatic ninth, however. Kirby Yates entered in relief for Los Angeles with the game still tied, 6-6, and allowed a leadoff single to nine-hitter Alejandro Osuna. Nicky Lopez came on as a pinch-hitter and dropped a sac bunt to get Osuna into scoring position, which brought up DH Wyatt Langford with a chance to win the game. And he did, on the third pitch he saw: Langford is a dangerous hitter on pitches inside, especially middle and low, and he rocketed a belt-high-and-in four-seam fastball to the fence 372 feet away at 98 mph — that was only a single because the run scored and negated the need for a double. The dub gets Texas back over .500, and with the Mariners losing the Rangers are also half-a-game up on Seattle for first place in the AL West. Welcome back, Langford. The Giants downed the Rockies 8-2 to open up a four-game series between the teams fighting to stay out of the NL West basement. But here’s what you really need to know about the game, in one short clip: There have been splash hits into McCovey Cove for decades now, but they just never get old. It’s the visual of the ball striking water, sure, but also that it has to be a serious dinger to earn the right to splash: up and over everything, in the park that is the worst for homers from left-handed hitters in baseball, per Savant, and second-worst for hitters of any kind. First baseman Bryce Eldridge has some serious pop, though, and showed it with his eighth homer of the year. He’s still a rookie, and just 21 years old — there will be far more homers for him in the future, even in that park. Cubs-Orioles on Thursday was another banger, this time with Baltimore coming out ahead. Right fielder Tyler O’Neill hit a homer for the third game in a row, and his Cubs’ counterpart, Seiya Suzuki, had a dinger of his own as well as an RBI double later on to drive in both of Chicago’s runs. The difference in the game ended up coming in the bottom of the eighth, with the Orioles down 2-1. Pinch-hitter Jeremiah Jackson entered and hit his ninth double of ‘26, sending first baseman Pete Alonso around to attempt to score. Center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong got to the ball first, and threw in to Nico Hoerner in shallow right-center — the throw was received on a hop, with Armstrong gunning it from the warning track, and Hoerner was a little slow in turning to throw before firing off another throw that required a hop to make it to its target. The result? Alonso coming in to score the go-ahead run by a fingertip — this one was even challenged by the Cubs. Now, PCA maybe did about all you can do from the distance he threw from, but Hoerner’s delayed — and not particularly laser-like throw — ended up costing Chicago. It’s worth pointing this out, too, because earlier the Orioles executed an excellent relay to keep a run from scoring, when it was still 1-0 Cubs. Left fielder Taylor Ward threw it in to third from the warning track in left, and Coby Mayo caught it in the air before turning and firing to backstop Adley Rutschman. While Mayo’s throw had a similar delay to Hoerner’s, the throw was significantly better, getting to Rutschman’s glove directly and allowing him to go straight for the tag from the moment he received it — first baseman Michael Busch ended up out instead of scoring by about a step. And since Baltimore won by a single run, well. The difference between these relay attempts ended up mattering quite a bit! There has to be a more accurate term for whatever Jake Bauers was doing here. The important thing — at least if you’re a Brewers fan — is that the DH was safe despite all of that. Or really, because of it. Bauers also drove in three runs with a dinger, his 17th of the year, so, pretty big game for him. This was a disaster start for Andre Pallante, who came into it with a 3.60 ERA in 17 starts but allowed six runs on 10 baserunners in five innings, shooting that number up to 3.96. The Cardinals weren’t able to mount a viable comeback, so Milwaukee won, 8-4, and is now a victory away from joining the Dodgers in the 60-win club. St. Louis, meanwhile, is three games back of a wild-card spot and 10 back of the Brewers in the NL Central. The team the Cardinals are behind in the wild-card race? The Miami Marlins. The Fish have been on a roll of late, leading MLB in wins in June by matching a franchise-best month with 20 dubs, and have now gone 16-4 in their last 20, matching another franchise-high for a 20-game stretch. Miami got there by defeating the Mariners, again, this time 8-4 to pick up the three-game sweep. Left fielder Griffin Conine had a three-hit day with a pair of runs and an RBI, which came on a solo homer in the second to tie the game 1-1. The fourth is where the Marlins broke things open, though, with a four-run inning punctuated by a two-run triple from shortstop Otto Lopez — which ended up being the game-winning hit — and he was then driven in by a single from first baseman Kyle Stowers to make it 6-1. Lopez is leading the majors with a .345 batting average, and it’s not an empty one: the 27-year-old is also leading the majors in doubles with 26, has six triples after Thursday’s and has gone yard nine times, to boot, with enough singles besides to lead the majors in hits, too. Sure, he’s been a bit lucky with his batting average on balls in play, but he was also unlucky in BABIP a year ago — there’s been some underlying improvement to his game that his poor luck obscured in 2025 and his good luck is now overstating, but what’s likely to be left in the end is a much more productive Lopez than the Marlins had prior to 2026. The Yankees got to Rays’ ace Colby Rasmussen, knocking him out after just 2 ⅓ innings with six runs allowed. The party kept going against Tampa Bay’s bullpen, too, with New York eventually winning, 12-4. Designated hitter Ben Rice had quite a bit to do with all of that, going yard not once, but twice. Rice now has 28 homers on the year, and it’s not quite the All-Star break yet — he had 26 homers during the entire 2025 season, but the 27-year-old is having a real breakout campaign right when the Yankees need it, i.e. with Aaron Judge still on the IL. Rice is participating in the Home Run Derby next week, and it sure seems like he’s ready for it. You know who else is going to be at the Derby socking dingers? Junior Caminero. He’s also ready for the Home Run Derby, and hit his 27th long ball early against New York on Thursday. The Rays’ third baseman lost in the finals of last year’s Derby. He might not lose this year, not with the way he’s gone yard with seeming ease of late. Philadelphia allowed five homers, three of them in a row, to the Reds in a loss on Wednesday. On Thursday, the Phillies got their revenge, courtesy the arm of Jesús Luzardo. Luzardo didn’t just keep the Reds in the park, he also kept them off the scoreboard with a seven-inning scoreless gem where he allowed just two hits and two walks against 11 strikeouts. Brady Singer was excellent for the Reds, too, but ever-so-slightly worse, allowing a single run in 7 ⅓. That difference was also the difference, as the Phillies would win 1-0 thanks to an RBI single by center fielder Justin Crawford in the top of the eighth off Singer. You only get one first-ever at-bat in the majors, and Eduardo Valencia made sure his was memorable. The Tigers used the rookie, in his big-league debut, as a pinch-hitter in the seventh inning against the Athletics. He saw four pitches, and drilled the last of them 425 feet to center. A home run in a pinch-hit MLB debut at-bat — incredible. Valencia would stay in the game and come back up again later as the DH, and end up hit by a pitch on a 2-0 count. Not all firsts are equal. Ryan O’Hearn had a grand slam and two three-run homers against the Braves earlier in the series, but on Thursday it was Atlanta clearing ‘em all in one swing against the Pirates. First baseman Matt Olson got the scoring going in the top of the first with his 25th homer of the year… …and the Braves eventually went up 6-2 after four innings, before the Pirates whittled away at that lead and cut it to one by the bottom of the sixth. With Atlanta still up just 6-5 in the top of the ninth, right fielder Mike Yastrzemski put the game out of reach. That was his sixth homer of the year, and it was a big one, going 403 feet and nearly 105 mph off the bat. Reliever Dennis Santana has not been having a good season, but that dinger made it that much worse, as his ERA is now 5.95. The Pirates really need to upgrade their bullpen before the trade deadline. The Braves, at least, are looking pretty good despite a mini slump in June, one Atlanta seems to be coming out of this month. For as poorly as June went for Atlanta, it’s still tied for the third-most wins in MLB this season with 54.