Mariners’ Rodriguez sets record
Julio Rodríguez set a major league record with his 17th hit in four games, Dylan Moore homered twice, and the Mariners beat the Astros, 10-3, for their fifth straight win Saturday night in Houston.
The Mariners pulled to 1½ games behind the Astros for the second AL wild card spot and stayed a half-game ahead of the Blue
Jays for the third and final AL wild card.
Jose Altuve in the fifth inning became the newest member of the 2,000-hit club. Altuve lined a 2-2 pitch from Logan Gilbert into the left-field corner, but tried to stretch the single into a double and was thrown out. Altuve is the third Astro with 2,000 hits.
Rodriguez, with a single to left field in the seventh, broke a major league record set in 1925 by Milt Stock of the Brooklyn Robins. Rodriguez finished 4 for 6, giving him his fourth consecutive four-plus hit game.
Rosario’s HR lifts Braves
Eddie Rosario had four hits, including a go-ahead, two-run homer in the eighth, and the Braves beat the Giants, 6-5, in Atlanta for their fifth straight win.
Marcell Ozuna hit a two-out single off Tyler Rogers (4-5) in the eighth. Rosario followed with a first-pitch blast to center field.
Rosario drove in three, including a runscoring double in the second.
The Giants took a 5-4 lead in the sixth on
Johan Camargo’s bases-loaded, double-play grounder that scored Michael Conforto.
Betts’s single right on time
Mookie Betts hit a two-run single in Los Angeles’s three-run eighth, and the Dodgers beat the Marlins, 3-1, in the opener of a splitdoubleheader in Los Angeles.
Ryan Yarbrough (6-5) pitched two perfect innings for the win, and Evan Phillips got three outs for his 19th save as the NL Westleading Dodgers improved to 16-2 in August.
The doubleheader, which replaces Sunday’s game, was scheduled because of Hurricane Hillary, which likely will cross into the Southwest US as a tropical storm.
Bryan De La Cruz hit an RBI double in the fourth, and Miami carried the 1-0 lead into the eighth. But it quickly fell apart.
James Outman drew a one-out walk and moved to third on Kiké Hernández’s single. Outman scored the tying run on Austin Barnes’s sacrifice bunt as first baseman Josh Bell’s throw went past catcher Jacob Stallings, allowing Hernández to advance to third and Barnes to second ahead of Betts’s single.
Blue Jays survive Reds
Davis Schneider hit a tiebreaking solo homer in the fifth inning and Jordan Romano worked out of a jam in the ninth, giving the Blue Jays a 4-3 win over the host Reds.
Chris Bassitt pitched six efficient innings for Toronto and All-Star Bo Bichette hit an RBI single in his first game since July 31.
Cincinnati put men on second and third with one out in the ninth against Romano, who fanned Henry Ramos and got Stuart Fairchild on a grounder for his 30th save.
Cincinnati tied it at 3 with three runs in the fourth. TJ Friedl led off with a homer. Following a Matt McLain walk, Elly De La Cruz hit a liner that caromed off the bottom of the wall in right. Cavan Biggio retrieved the ball and fired wildly back to the infield. The throw trickled through to foul territory, and De La Cruz raced home, beating third baseman Matt Chapman’s flip to the plate.
Ramírez honored in Cleveland
One of best hitters in history, and one of the game’s biggest characters, Manny Ramírez, who broke in with the powerhouse Indians teams in the 1990s, was in Cleveland for induction into the Guardians’ Hall of Fame.
The 51-year-old Ramírez, who finished with a career .312 batting average and 555 home runs, was relaxed and wildly entertaining during a session with reporters in which he touched on his career in Cleveland and Boston, his ambivalence toward being voted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame, and his future.
“I’m going to play in Prague next year,” he claimed. “They saw me hitting BP [batting practice] and they said can you take some atbats with us? In Czechoslovakia, yes.”
With Ramírez, anything’s possible.
“He’s one of the most gifted hitters I’ve ever seen,” said Guardians manager Terry Francona, who won two World Series with Ramírez in Boston. “It felt different when he got in that batter’s box. It was different when he left the batter’s box, too.”
Angels edge Rays in opener
Brandon Drury had three hits, including a home run in the fifth, and the Angels held on for a 7-6 win over the Rays in the first game of a split doubleheader in Anaheim, Calif.
Randal Grichuk drove in two runs for the Angels, and made a leaping catch at the wall in the second to rob Yandy Diaz of a homer.
Mike Moustakas reached on an error to load the bases in the third. Nolan Schanuel scored on a passed ball. Matt Thaiss had an RBI and Moustakas scored on a wild pitch. Grichuk’s double put Los Angeles up, 6-2.