Last Night In Baseball: Cardinals Keep Burleson, Burleson Blasts Yankees

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:

The Cardinals might have made a few moves on deadline day, but do you know who St. Louis didn’t deal? Alec Burleson. And that ended up working out for at least one night, as the 27-year-old first baseman was the key to a win over the Yankees.

Burleson went yard in the top of the first with a two-run homer to give the Cardinals an early lead. Cam Schlittler threw a 97 mph four-seam fastball high in the zone and away, and Burleson just turned on it and pulled the pitch, anyway. This one went just 350 feet, but Burleson struck it hard, as it came off the bat at 103.6 mph, and it got out of the ballpark fast.

The second blast from Burleson was hit a little further — 365 feet — and a little harder — 108.3 mph — and came off a different pitcher, too, as Schlittler had been lifted after three innings and Tim Hill was on the mound at this point.

While this made it 6-0 Cards, the Yankees’ offense woke up afterward, and scored seven unanswered runs between the fifth and seventh innings. Burleson wasn’t part of the comeback that put the Cardinals ahead for good, but he delivered the dagger in the top of the eighth: another two-run homer, his third of the game, to put St. Louis up 13-7.

This one was a tank, with Burleson drilling a low-and-inside slider 418 feet to right field, at 109.1 mph off the bat. Reliever Angel Chivilli gave up that dinger, and all six runs of the eighth, but that Burleson shot was certainly the loudest of the three the 24-year-old allowed.

Are the Cardinals out of it, after making some moves and dealing away starting pitcher Dustin May? At 56-57 and just four games out of a wild-card spot, absolutely not. At least not on nights where Alec Burleson decides to go all out — he’s now batting .288/.350/.480, which would be a career-best in all three marks. 

Things didn’t go so well for the Yankees despite a seven-run outburst over a few innings, but on the bright side, brand-new Yankee Luis García Jr. made his debut with New York, and he delivered. He crushed a changeup at the bottom of the strike zone from George Soriano 424 feet for his first dinger on the Yankees.

That was García’s 24th homer of the season — he might be limited to facing right-handed pitching, but (1) most of the pitchers in the league are righties and (2) García has been great against them, hitting .298/.328/.603 with 21 of his 24 homers in those matchups.

Like the Cardinals, the Rays would score 13 runs on Monday night, and also because a slugger had a multihomer game. For Tampa Bay, it was third baseman Junior Caminero, and he went yard twice against the Rockies. Also like Burleson, Caminero got to work right away, launching a two-run dinger in the top of the first.

Michael Lorenzen went middle-middle with a sinker that did not sink nearly enough to fool Caminero, who turned it into his 31st long ball of the season and a 2-0 Rays’ lead. It was an impressive one, too, at 422 feet, but save some of the glory for the second Caminero homer of the day: against reliever Tanner Gordon in the fourth — it was uh, not a good game for the Rockies — Caminero connected on an 88 mph slider way up in the zone, and he sent it into orbit.

This dinger had an exit velocity of 112.4 mph and traveled 442 feet to left-center — Caminero crushed that pitch. He’s now batting .283/.373/.557 with 32 homers, good for fourth in the majors and second in the AL behind MLB leader, Yordan Alvarez. The Rays would win, 13-9, with Colorado scoring seven runs in the last few innings but also allowing another five in the process.

The Padres dealt for two-fifths of a new rotation on Monday, adding Robbie Ray from the Giants and Casey Mize from the Tigers on deadline day. Those pitchers were desperately needed, as the rotation was basically Michael King and praying for four straight days of rain, which made the whiplash of the actual game played on Monday that much rougher. King got the start, but the Padres were just never quite in it thanks to the offense going quiet.

First baseman Tim Tawa hit his fifth homer of the year in the fourth, giving Arizona a 3-0 lead in a game where King wasn’t particularly sharp — he allowed four walks and five hits in just five innings of work.

In the bottom of the eighth, Arizona scored two more, when catcher James McCann lashed an RBI single off reliever Wandy Peralta, who then also allowed a sac fly to make it 5-1, D-backs.

That would be the final score, as Brandon Pfaadt held San Diego to one run over 6 ⅔ innings, with just three strikeouts but also just six baserunners, and the Arizona pen took care of business the rest of the way. The Padres fell to two back of a wild-card spot, while the Diamondbacks kept pace with the Phillies for the two wild-cards they are tied for.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. isn’t having a great season at the plate — it’s August 4 and he has just six homers after a postseason in which he had eight — but the defense is still fun. Check out this spin move on a grounder to first that he didn’t quite corral at first.

The Blue Jays balanced selling with buying at the deadline, and on Monday, Toronto won against the Astros, a team it might very well be facing down for a wild-card if the AL West race doesn’t work out for Houston, 3-1. Guerrero went 0-for-4, but he did have this play to help out, at least.

Daulton Varsho was dealt to the Astros before Toronto matched up against them on Monday, but don’t worry, that didn’t immediately end the friendships he had with his now ex-teammates.

Deadline day has to be really weird even before you consider some of these guys are walking to the clubhouse across the stadium.

We’ll have to wait and see if the Phillies’ plan to rearrange their entire defense to accommodate Luis Arraez’s bat will work out, but on Monday? Philadelphia emerged victorious over the Nationals. It didn’t look like it was going to go that way at first, though. Washington was up 3-0 after the top half of the seventh, and starting pitcher Andrew Alvarez was still out there for the bottom of the frame as he had allowed just four baserunners to that point.

Alvarez retired third baseman Alec Bohm to start the inning, but then hit right fielder Bryan De La Cruz with a pitch and walked second baseman Bryson Stott.

Alvarez exited for reliever Tom Cosgrove, who promptly walked left fielder Edmundo Sosa to bring up center fielder Derek Hill with the bases loaded. Hill saw two pitches, and sent the second one — a sweeper that fooled no one — into the stands in left-center.

Oh yeah, that one merited the alternate camera extended bat flip sequence replay.

Bryce Harper — still at first base before the switch to the outfield to account for Arraez — would then hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth to give the Phillies some insurance. This one didn’t count for as many runs as Hill’s, but it went 433 feet with a 112.6 mph exit velocity, so you can admire it all the same.

The Phillies would win, 6-3, giving Philadelphia its 60th win of the season and allowing it to keep pace with the victorious D-backs in the NL wild-card race. It also let Philly go up another game on the Padres while staying two ahead of the Marlins, 3.5 in front of the Pirates and four in front of the Cardinals. The Nats fell to 5.5 back, and are 3-7 in their last 10 — selling some pieces in a race this crowded,as Washington did, probably wasn’t the worst strategy.

The Dodgers were swept by the Red Sox over the weekend, and now have themselves a genuine losing streak after falling 10-5 to the Cubs on Monday. Los Angeles got out ahead in a hurry when second baseman Tommy Edman hit a three-run homer in the top of the first inning, but that ended up being the majority of the Dodgers’ attack. 

Lefty starter Justin Wrobleski labored through this one for Los Angeles, and not for very long. He gave up a two-run homer to right fielder Seiya Suzuki in the first…

…then allowed the first home run of left fielder Kevin Alcántara’s career in the second to put the Cubs up 4-3…

…then allowed another two-run homer in the third, this one to catcher Carson Kelly.

Somehow, that wasn’t all: Wrobleski allowed a fourth homer in the fifth, to first baseman Michael Busch, and it was 7-4 Cubs at that point. Wrobleski has gotten rocked the last two times out now, with the Mariners scoring five runs on four homers in his final July start, and now four more and seven runs by the Cubs in his first of August.

The Cubs would get a few more, and earn their 64th win of the year. That’s more than all but one team in the American League, by the way: the Cubs are merely the first wild-card squad in the NL right now. With the Dodgers and Brewers both losing — Milwaukee fell to the Pirates, 4-3 — the race to be the first MLB team to 70 wins will wait one more day: both have 69 dubs, with the Brewers slightly ahead for the best record in MLB with one fewer defeat.

Speaking of that Brewers’ loss and Pirates’ win, here’s rookie right fielder Esmerlyn Valdez in the bottom of the third, robbing third baseman David Hamilton of extra bases with a diving catch.

Valdez had a three-walk game on the other side of the ball, and scored one of the Bucs’ three runs in the W. The 22-year-old is batting .260/.375/.623 in 45 games — he’s a huge part of the reason that, despite the problems this team has had with pitching, Pittsburgh has kept in this wild-card race.