Last Night in Baseball: Big Dumper is now your MLB home run leader

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: Raleigh hits MLB-leading homer No. 23
Cal Raleigh maybe wasn't a household name before 2025, but he is doing everything he can to change that as quickly as possible. The Mariners' catcher has been good for some time, sure, and Seattle fans certainly appreciated his bat, but the 2025 season has been something else for the player affectionately referred to as Big Dumper.
Raleigh, who hit 101 homers from 2022 through 2024, is now leading the majors in dingers with 23 after a solo shot against Twins' starter Chris Paddack gave Seattle a 1-0 lead in the seventh.
Paddack had been marvelous to that point, and would finish with eight innings of one-run ball, 10 strikeouts, and five total baserunners over 110 pitches. The Mariners were just a little bit better in the end, though, with four pitchers combining to limit Minnesota to one run, and Seattle picking up a walk-off win via Randy Arozarena single in the ninth.
As for Raleigh, he's batting .264/.379/.637, and sits one home run ahead of Shohei Ohtani for the MLB lead, and two ahead of Aaron Judge, both of whom went deep multiple times over the weekend while facing off in Los Angeles. Caminero had himself a week
Speaking of homers, Rays' third baseman Junior Caminero hit two more of them on Saturday, bringing his weekly total to four. The 21-year-old still has some holes in his game – he's batting .262/.291/.505 for the year with 13 homers – but the power has certainly been there to start the year in a way it wasn't when he got the call in 2024.
Caminero went deep 31 times as a 19-year-old in the minors in 2023, and showed off quite a bit of pop at 20 in Triple-A with 13 in 53 games in 2024, but in the majors that same summer his power didn't show up much. Again, though, look at his age: Caminero is still real young, and that he's done this much to this point is only a positive sign. A nightmare weekend for the Phillies
Things did not go well for the Phillies this weekend. They were swept by the Brewers at the same time that the Mets happened to be facing the lowly Rockies, who they managed to sweep, meaning Philly dropped three games in the standings in three days, and now sit one game out of first in the NL East. Sure, it's just the beginning of June, but it still doesn't feel very good for this to happen, you know?
It also doesn't help that Sunday's defeat at the hands of Milwaukee was a beatdown. The Phillies scored seven runs… and were outscored by 10. The Brewers scored 17 runs for the second time this season, with former Phils' slugger Rhys Hoskins putting up six RBIs and two homers in the effort, while Jackson Chourio had five RBIs and a long ball of his own. A's finally escape May, but bad news, now it's June
On May 5, the Athletics had possession of one of the American League's three wild card spots. They were 20-16, four games over .500 and looking like they might have improved on their 2024, which, while not inspiring at 69-93, was a significant step forward after 2023's horrid campaign that saw them lose 112 games.
It is June 2. Since that high point, the A's have gone 3-24, including a sweep at the hands of the Blue Jays as the calendar switched from May to June, in which Toronto outscored the Athletics 31-14. They lost 11 games in a row before defeating the Phillies to avoid extending that streak on May 25, and then lost their next six games. The A's are now on pace for 100 losses, on the nose, which is especially alarming given how solid they looked before everything fell apart in May.
The offense has been mostly fine – the team lost 12 points of slugging in May, but replaced it with 16 points of on-base percentage, giving them .256/.328/.413 for the month. The pitching, though… Since May 6, the A's innings leader, Jeffrey Springs, has a 4.39 ERA. The next-most innings were logged by Gunnar Hoglund (7.52 ERA). Then JP Sears (8.87), Luis Severino (4.50) and Mitch Spence (5.29). Justin Sterner, the reliever who has appeared in the most games in this run, has an ERA of 11.17 during it. Tyler Ferguson has pitched in 10 of the games, and is at 10.00. The starts made by pitchers who weren't regulars in the rotation all went just as poorly as everyone else's.
The news gets worse, of course: Sutter Health Park is supposed to be more of a hitters' park in the summer, since temperatures climb in the Sacramento sun. We're not even at that part of the season yet, and look what's already happened to the pitching staff. Benches clear in Orioles - White Sox
On Saturday, Orioles rookie Coby Mayo collected his first MLB RBI, but was then caught in a pickle between first and second. He ended up running into White Sox second baseman Lenyn Sosa and falling to the ground before being tagged out. Feeling that the contact had been embellished, Sosa approached Mayo after the play, who then pushed him out of the way, invoking a mutual confrontation between the teams.
Mayo might be a rookie, but you have to have better acting chops than that if you're going to try to place blame on someone else for your fall at the big-league level. The way things worked out, it looks like Mayo went out of his way to hit Sosa, and then fell down while doing that.
Sure, the Orioles' coaches probably have enough on their hands in this disappointing season, but you can't neglect the fundamentals.
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