Last night in baseball: Ketel Marte hit a home run you need to see

There’s always baseball – almost too much baseball for one person to follow.

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:

Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte left the Dodgers on Thursday, earning Arizona a series split with the NL West’s surging leader. It’s an incredible home run, a dinger worth celebrating (unless you’re a Dodgers fan, naturally), so let’s go through the moment piece by piece to pick out the best parts.

First, the dinger in question, from Tanner Scott:

1. The home run itself was incredible. Marte took a 97.2 mph fastball in the zone and hit it 431 feet, with an exit velocity of 113 mph. That’s a scientific way of saying he crushed that ball.
2. D-Backs third baseman Nolan Arenado is caught on camera saying what appears to be: “Why!? Why would you throw that???” as he goes out to celebrate.
3. As Marte passes second and heads toward third, he mimes a jump shot.
4. At the turn of the third game, Marte noticed that he was being hounded by his double play partner, shortstop Geraldo Perdomo. Perdomo had the Gatorade bucket and chased after him, but Marte eluded him and continued heading toward the house.
5. However, he gets smacked with the bucket of gum as he walks home.
6. Perdomo doesn’t give up just because he missed Marte on the first pass, but his second attempt isn’t successful either. Instead of Marte getting drenched, it’s starter Eduardo Rodriguez who takes a full mouthful of water.
7. It’s not shown in this video, but Perdomo then grabbed a second bucket of water and dumped it on another starter, Merrill Kelly.

Baseball rules. Oh, and look at this.

Add this bat flip to the list above, because it’s expert level even without the mimicry. Marte already has three hits this season, the most of any player in the league. And there is also a lot left for 2026.

Speaking of outs and lots of them, the Chicago Cubs picked up their seventh of the season on Thursday, the most in MLB. “Are Cub Scouts good?” That’s not an easy question to answer, between that, the two 10-game winning streaks and the 10-game losing streak. But it’s at least one team that wants it could be good, and with all those wild-card spots, that might be enough even in the most populous National League.

The hero of the day was center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, but before the game he scored a 1-yarder in the sixth to put the Cubs on the board and cut the Athletics’ lead to 4-1.

The A’s responded with another pair of runs, but left fielder Ian Happ canceled that advance with a two-run shot in the seventh. Not yet enough, but be patient: the big round was approaching.

In the bottom of the ninth, Joel Kuhnel came on in relief of Mark Leiter Jr. for the A’s. Everything started to fall apart at that point. First baseman Michael Busch led off the inning with a double, then Happ hit a second to cut the lead to 6-4. Second baseman Nico Hoerner got Happ to third, but then was caught stealing – two outs. Moisés Ballesteros cut a single that deflected off Alika Williams, leaving third baseman Zack Gelof unable to pick it up either. Happ scored; 6-5, A’s.

Seiya Suzuki came in as a pinch hitter and singled, putting the tying run into scoring position. Luis Medina then entered the game in relief of Kuhnel, but he gave up a tying single to the first batter he faced, shortstop Dansby Swanson, whose hit also sent Suzuki 90 feet from home. This gave PCA a chance to be the hero, and he delivered.

A complete Athletics collapse in the ninth, but rest assured, A’s fans: It just lost the game, not the series, and with the Mariners out on Thursday, the damage to the standings was only half a game.

There was also this fun little game, before said crisis. Designated hitter Shea Langeliers joined a strange club, as he homered the traditional way in the fourth inning…

…then in the sixth, he hit an inside-the-park home run for his second of the day.

By MLB Sarah LangsLangeliers is the 15th player in A’s history to hit a multi-homer game with an inside-the-park shot, and only the fifth during the divisional era (1969-2026). And also by LanguagesThis is the eighth time this has happened at Wrigley Field, and the first time since 1991, when Cubs legend Ryne Sandberg made it.

It’s also worth pointing out that it was Pete Crow-Armstrong who lost Langeliers’ second circuit in the sky and let it fall behind him. The PCA managed to make up for this mistake and more at the end of the game, huh?

While the Cubs were able to win a game against the Brewers – Milwaukee lost to the Giants in the finale of that series, 12-9 – they couldn’t do the same against the NL Central’s second-place team, the Pirates. Pittsburgh faced the Houston Astros in the rubber match at Daikin Park, and it went from close to no at all in one fell swoop.

The Pirates led 1-0 entering the sixth inning, as Astros starter Kai-Wei Teng managed to keep the Bucs’ bats quiet, limiting them to one run and three hits. The sixth, however, was a disaster: Teng gave up four straight hits, two of them for extra bases, and the Pirates led 4-0 with a runner still on as he was relieved.

Second baseman Brandon Lowe led off with a double, then DH Bryan Reynolds hit him on a single to make it 2-0. Right fielder Ryan O’Hearn followed with his ninth homer of the year, then third baseman Nick Gonzales knocked Teng out of the game with a single.

An error by Jeremy Peña at shortstop allowed Gonzales to come back and score to make it 5-0 later in the inning, and although Houston would hold the Pirates scoreless the rest of the way, the damage was already done.

Reliever Carmen Mlodzinski allowed the Astros one run, but earned a save in four innings while otherwise being very efficient, and that was the series. Pittsburgh moved to just 4.5 games behind the Brewers in the Central and is also a half-game away from a wild card spot.

There was one positive for the Astros in the loss, however. Third baseman Isaac Paredes became just the fourth Mexican MLB player to hit at least 100 home runs in his career, with this sixth-inning dinger against Mlodzinski.

The other three players? Vinny Castillo is the all-time leader with 320, followed by Jorge Orta (130) and Aurelio Rodríguez (120). Since Paredes is a) a pretty good hitter and b) only 27 years old, he will climb even higher on this list.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has been on a power drought lately, but he continues to hit a lot of singles and walks. When the opportunity to turn a single into a double presented itself to the Braves, the Blue Jays first baseman took it, even running into the powerful arm of right fielder Ronald Acuña Jr.

Guerrero got the better of Acuña there, but the real gold is in the finger movement after the play. Pretty good too, considering Guerrero looked happy to still be alive after reaching the second safe. It’s not every day that a baserunner wins against Acuña’s arm! This is worth celebrating.

The Blue Jays would also end up winning the game 7-2. Toronto is almost back to .500, at 30-33; The Braves are doing pretty well despite this loss, thank you, because Atlanta leads the majors with 42 wins and the fewest losses of anyone.

About that 12-9 Giants victory: Once again, right fielder Jung Hoo Lee was at the center of a high-scoring day for San Francisco. He finished his May with a five-hit game against the Rockies that saw the Giants win 19-6, and on Thursday he went 4-for-5 with a double, an RBI and three runs scored.

Lee, 27, now in his third season in the majors, appears to be taking another step forward offensively. During his rookie season, he hit just .262/.310/.331 for an OPS+ of 85, but then turned in an above-average performance in 2025, hitting .266/.327/.407 for a 110 OPS+. This year so far, he’s added some batting average, bringing his line as a whole to .322/.356/.447 and a 132 OPS+.

Part of that is likely due to ball luck, but he’s also been a little more aggressive at the plate and taking advantage of pitches he can hit earlier in the count. It cost him a few walks, but it’s hard to argue with the results so far. Baseball is truly a series of adjustments that come and go forever.

Treason. That’s all you can call it. A betrayal by the mound, against Twins reliever Justin Lawrence. Here he is, in a tie game, throwing off the mound like pitchers always do, and a comebacker up the middle hits the mound and sends the ball off course.

What should have been a ball hit by the pitcher, instead hit in exactly the wrong place and at the wrong angle, and fired behind Lawrence and into center field. The game was tied 6-6, but the Royals had loaded the bases, and third baseman Josh Rojas – who had entered the game as a pinch hitter for Nick Loftin – was able to thread the needle and score two runners to go up 8-6.

The Twins didn’t answer in the bottom of the inning and the Royals won the opener of this four-game series. At 25-38, Kansas City already needs every win it can get to catch up in the AL Central and wild-card races. Taking a series from the Reds and this win is a good start, but that’s it so far.