Last Night in Baseball: Brewers Win 10th-Straight, Sweep Dodgers and Tie Cubs

Fox Sports

2 days ago

There is always baseball happening — almost too much baseball for one person to handle themselves.
That's why we're here to help, though, by sifting through the previous days' games, and figuring out what you missed, but shouldn't have. Here are all the best moments from the weekend in Major League Baseball : Brewers sweep, streak and tie in one weekend
The Brewers entered the All-Star break riding a seven-game win streak, and after their weekend series against the Dodgers, you'd never know that they had to hit pause. Milwaukee swept the Dodgers, pushing their win streak to 10 games and putting them in a tie with the Cubs atop the NL Central. It was the Brewers' second sweep of the Dodgers in the 10-game streak, too: wins two through four came at Los Angeles' expense, as well.
That the Dodgers were swept does make it seem like a far more dominant performance for the Brewers than it maybe was, but here's the thing: great teams need to win these close games, too. And the Dodgers had three close games over the weekend and failed to win any of them, with Milwaukee holding on in all three cases.
On Friday, it was a 2-0 shutout, courtesy six shutout innings from Milwaukee starter Quinn Priester: he scattered three hits while striking out 10 Dodgers against zero walks before handing things off to the bullpen to close it out the rest of the way. You can blame the Dodgers' lineup for not getting enough done there — and for not taking advantage of Tyler Glasnow's strong start, as he allowed one run over six innings while allowing just five baserunners — but it was on the pitching and the defense the rest of the series.
On Saturday, Milwaukee's bats woke up just a little more than L.A.'s, making up for a pitching performance where neither starter Wily Peralta nor the bullpen that succeeded him were able to get things together. Even with Peralta giving up four runs in five frames, though, opposing starter Emmet Sheehan allowed five in just three, and the Dodgers never fully dug themselves out of that hole, losing 8-7. Three early errors doomed the Dodgers on Sunday. Up 3-0 in the fourth, the Dodgers allowed a run on a Tommy Edman throwing error that scored Andrew Vaughn. Joey Ortiz would then reach on an error by Andy Pages in center, allowing Andruw Monasterio to score, tying things up 3-3.
Then, in the fifth, Andrew Vaughn would single to left, and William Contreras would advance to third on an error by Esteury Ruiz. While the Dodgers would escape unscathed in the frame, all of these errors meant that starter Clayton Kershaw was lifted earlier than he should have been given his own performance — despite allowing just five hits and one walk even with innings being extended by errors, Kershaw was lifted in the fifth at 81 pitches. And then the Brewers feasted on the Dodgers' bullpen, earning the 6-5 win and the sweep.
The Brewers, now tied with the Cubs in the Central, will head to Seattle to face the Mariners for three games, then it's back to Milwaukee for a three-game set against the Marlins, and finally, a series against the Cubs to cap off July — when it's all said and done, this run in July could be the most significant of the year for them, but there's plenty of both the month and the season left, too. Ohtani goes deep twice
It wasn't all bad for the Dodgers over the weekend, though. Well, okay, it wasn't bad news for all the Dodgers would be more accurate. Shohei Ohtani now has 34 homers on the year after a pair of long balls on Saturday and Sunday.
That wasn't enough to stop the bleeding by any means, but we're here for the highlights, you know. Ohtani's performance over the weekend pushed his slugging percentage back up over .600 — he'd briefly fallen under with Friday's 0-for-4 performance, which itself was the exclamation point on what had been a tough July for the two-way star: Ohtani was hitting just .170/.316/.362 on the month through July 18. He hasn't repaired all that damage, but he's bumped his July up to a far more manageable slump of .200/.333/.473 with a much more productive Saturday and Sunday; if Ohtani can get back to hitting like usual, that would go a long way towards ending the Dodgers' recent skid, in which they've lost 5.5 games in the standings since July 3 by doing 2-12 in that stretch. Ohtani doesn't lead the NL anymore, however…
…because Eugenio Suárez had an even better post-break weekend. Suarez, the Diamondbacks' third baseman who hit two homers right before the All-Star break to help make it five players across MLB with at least 30 homers, still had that power strike going for him after the Midsummer Classic. Suárez went yard twice on Saturday against the Cardinals, and then repeated that trick on Sunday, giving him 35 for the season.
Suddenly, Suárez is leading the NL in homers, sits one behind Aaron Judge — who also hit a home run on Sunday — and is just three behind MLB leader Cal Raleigh. As noted in Friday's second-half milestone watch , Suárez is one of five player who was on pace for at least 50 dingers in 2025: there have never been five players with 50 homers in one MLB season before, and now we have Suárez hitting another four, Ohtani a pair, Judge one and Kyle Schwarber — thanks to a homer each on Friday and Saturday, the latter a grand slam — up to 32 on the year. Exciting times if you dig the long ball. The Giants aren't helping themselves
The Dodgers were up nine games on both the Giants and Padres back on July 3, and, despite their horrid stretch since that has seen that lead cut to 3.5 games for San Diego, San Francisco hasn't been able to follow suit. They were swept over the weekend by the Blue Jays by a combined score of 18-9, which also gave them five losses in a row. Despite the Dodgers practically handing over an opportunity to significantly narrow the gap between them in the standings, the Giants still sit six back of Los Angeles.
Not just that, but the Giants are now 2.5 back of a wild card, as the Mets, Brewers, Cubs and Padres are all ahead of them in the standings. There's still plenty of 2025 left, but you have to remember that the Giants have been slipping for some time now, too: they were in first place in the NL West on June 13, and 12 games over .500 at the time. Now they're six back and four games over — how much further behind would they be if the Dodgers hadn't also fallen apart for the past few weeks? Buxton makes a goofy grab
All that matters on a catch is whether or not the ball touches the ground before a fielder can reel it in. And good thing, too, because Twins' center fielder Byron Buxton had this one, until he didn't, until he had it once again.
Yes, the play was goofy in the sense that Buxton bobbled the ball a bit, and you can see his eyes kind of cartoonishly pop out of his head in the slow-motion replay, but that also took some intense concentration — and a little bit of luck — to keep the ball from bouncing elsewhere or just rolling off of his body as he hit the ground. Buxton is a great outfielder and has been for ages, and is not normally the type to make things harder for himself. His recovery here is unreal, though, and it counts the same in the boxscore as any other putout.
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