Tight race brewing for last NL berth
The Brewers headed to St. Louis still battling for the last available playoff spot.
Milwaukee closed within two games of Colorado for the National League’s second wild card with three games left, rallying to beat the Cincinnati Reds 4-3 Thursday as Brett Phillips hit a go-ahead double in the sixth inning.
“This team is relentless. We keep fighting,” Phillips said. “These are must-win games. Going to St. Louis for three, we owe it to each other to play hard and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Milwaukee (84-75) closes the regular season at St. Louis and the Rockies host the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Brewers are assured of their best record since finishing 96-66 in 2011, when they lost to the Cardinals in the NL Championship Series — Milwaukee’s last playoff appearance.
Red Sox down to one: At Boston, MLB batting leader Jose Altuve had three of Houston’s 17 hits, Carlos Correa had four and the Astros chased Red Sox starter Eduardo Rodriguez in the second inning to win 12-2 and keep Boston from clinching their first backto-back AL East banners in franchise history.
Despite the loss, the Red Sox were guaranteed no worse than a tie for the division title when the Yankees lost 9-6 to Tampa Bay in New York.
Boston needs one more win or Yankees loss to win the division; otherwise, the teams would meet in a onegame tiebreaker in New York Monday.
Indians hit century mark: The Cleveland Indians joined an elite group Thursday by recording their 100th victory of the season.
Carlos Carrasco struck out 14, Jason Kipnis and Roberto Perez hit two-run homers as Cleveland won 5-2 over the understandably sluggish Minnesota Twins, who celebrated their wild-card berth earlier Thursday.
By improving to 31-3 since Aug. 24, the 2017 Indians joined the 1954 and 1995 teams to reach the century mark.
The Indians are the seventh team to reach 100 wins in the past decade.
Stanton reaches 59: At Miami, Giancarlo Stanton homered twice to become the first player to hit 59 in a season since 2001 and the Miami Marlins opened the last series of Jeffrey Loria’s tenure as owner by beating the Atlanta Braves 7-1.
Stanton hit a solo home run in the fourth, then added a two-run drive in the eighth that would have gone 467 feet unimpeded, according to MLB’s Statcast.
He has 33 home runs since the all-star break. He became the sixth player to reach 59, joining Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Roger Maris and Babe Ruth.
Strikeout record falls: MLB hitters have once again swung — and missed — into the record book.
For the 10th straight year, MLB batters have set the mark for most strikeouts in a season. They did it Wednesday, raising the whiff total to 39,168. That topped the 38,982 who fanned in 2016.