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The Twins entered the day on a 10-game winning streak that brought them back into the mix in the competitive AL Central. They have also had a sudden influx of injuries. In the second game of Wednesday’s doubleheader against the Orioles, Harrison Bader exited in the third inning after feeling tightness in his groin. He was not in the lineup for Thursday’s series finale. France left the first game of the doubleheader with a left foot contusion after fouling a ball off of his foot, and while he didn’t start on Thursday, he was able to take Buxton’s spot in the lineup mid-game.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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As for who’s leading the way for the Mets, first baseman Pete Alonso — who didn’t re-sign with the Mets until February — has been phenomenal, totaling nine home runs and 36 RBIs while boasting a .311/.421/.584 slash line, and Francisco Lindor and Brandon Nimmo have driven in 26 runs, apiece; Soto, who announced on Wednesday that he’ll play for the Dominican Republic in the 2026 World Baseball Classic, has totaled eight home runs and 20 RBIs, while boasting a .255/.380/.465 slash line.

Meanwhile, New York’s starting rotation has a 2.74 ERA, which is first in MLB, and its bullpen has a 2.98 ERA, which is fourth in MLB.

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The Tigers made it right later on, as they ended up winning with another walk-off hit against the Sox — as if the universe was in disagreement about the earlier assisted home run robbery even happening — but hey. The Sox will always have that impossible catch. 

Julio Rodríguez gets his revenge on Trent Grisham

Let’s rewind to Monday night’s action for a moment, to set the scene. It’s the first game of the Yankees taking on the Mariners in Seattle. Trent Grisham hits not one, but two home runs, to the exact same spot in the park — the 401-foot marker where the walls meet at an angle in center — with center fielder Julio Rodríguez just missing robbing the first to the point it bounced off of his glove, and mistiming his attempt at long ball thievery the second time. 

On Wednesday, Rodríguez got the timing down, and it was somehow again Grisham at the plate.

This ball was hit more toward left field, rather than the same spot as Monday’s dual dingers, but it was still within range. Well, Rodríguez’s range, anyway. And he timed the jump perfectly here, and kept Grisham from adding to the dozen homers he’s already hit this year. 

Like with the Red Sox and their highlight-reel catch against the Tigers not being enough, the Mariners would end up losing to the Yankees, 3-2. At least Rodríguez doesn’t have to torture himself with thoughts of three home runs that Grisham hit just out-of-reach, all in one series.

Hoskins’ big 4-hit night

Rhys Hoskins’ first season with the Brewers after seven years with the Phillies didn’t go as expected for either side. He hit just .214/.303/.419 — a little below-average for any hitter, never mind a first baseman and DH — after producing a .242/.353/.492 line for his entire run in Philadelphia. The 2025 season has gone much differently for Hoskins, though, with Wednesday’s game a great example of that, as he collected four hits and drove in five runs against the Guardians in a 9-5 win. 

Hoskins also drew a walk and scored a pair of runs himself to go with a double, a two-run homer, and a pair of singles. His line for the year is now up to .292/.396/.462, good for a 141 OPS+ that would rank as the second-best of his career over a full season. Which is to say that it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he keeps this going, though, it is worth pointing out that his batting average on balls in play (.355) is as overly high as last season’s (.250) was low. Still, if he balances it out a bit and can hit .250 or so with plenty of walks and a bit of pop, the Brewers will be a lot happier with the results than they were a year ago.

Twins extend win-streak to 10

With the Cardinals losing on Wednesday, the Twins are now alone on the lengthy win-streak front, and were able to push theirs to 10 with a pair of wins over the Orioles that also gave them a sweep. Thanks to the doubleheader, the Twins have the longest win streak in MLB this year, and it’s pushed them from a disappointing 13-20 start that had them eight games back in the AL Central and already 4.5 back of a wild card to their present position: 23-20, 5.5 back in the Central, and in possession of the last of the three wild cards. 

Minnesota’s run differential sat at -1 when the streak began, and has since jumped to +24, which is just about what you’d expect from a team with their record. Byron Buxton (.270/.378/.595), Trevor Larnach (.310/.341/.595) and Harrison Bader (.417/.500/.667) have led the offensive attack during this 10-game streak, which is great news on the one hand, but on the other, Bader exited the second game of the doubleheader after injuring his groin on a sliding catch. Bader currently ranks first on the Twins in OPS+ among regulars, so losing him for any amount of time would be a blow.

Kim gets his first big-league homer

The Dodgers called up Hyeseong Kim from the minors this month in order to help plug the holes in the lineup that various injuries have created, and he has not disappointed. After 11 games and 25 plate appearances, the 26-year-old has played at second base, center field and shortstop as needed, and is batting .360/.360/.480. He hasn’t drawn a walk yet, but he did get his first homer in the majors on Wednesday:

As the Dodgers get healthy — if that’s even allowed, anyway — Kim might find himself back in the minors so he can play every day. If he’s going to hit like this when he has the chance to fill in, though, then if he’s not just kept on the big-league roster, then he’ll at least be first in line to return.

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As for Soto, the five-time Silver Slugger is in his first season with the Mets, who signed him to a record-breaking, 15-year, $765 million contract in the offseason. Thus far, Soto has totaled eight home runs and 20 RBIs, while boasting a .255/.380/.465 slash line and posting 1 DRS in right field.

The Mets are atop the National League East at 28-15, which is the best record in the NL.

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But it’s the ‘88 Orioles who make up the vast majority of the list from 14 games into the season through 41, owing to their 0-21 start. (To put that into perspective, the Orioles were the only team to start a season 0-14 at the time that they managed the feat, and then they pushed that to 0-21.) Somehow, a team that began the season 0-21 finished it 54-107: that’s not a record to be proud of by any means, but considering that 41 games in they were the worst team in history to that point and on pace for a 28-134 record, the O’s had to be happy with where they ended up instead. 

Finishing with 107 losses probably sounds amazing to everyone in the Rockies organization at this point, but one thing the Orioles had in 1988 were a mix of promising younger players and productive veterans, the latter of whom saw their seasons recover. Hall of Famer Eddie Murray, then 32, finished the year batting .284/.361/.474, good for a 136 OPS+. Fred Lynn, then 36, wrapped at .252/.312/.482 for a 122 OPS+. Mickey Tettleton (27) hit .261/.330/.424, Joe Orsulak (26) added a 113 OPS+, and another Cooperstown inductee, Cal Ripken Jr., wrapped his age-27 season — one in which he was the Orioles’ All-Star representative — with a line of .264/.372/.431. 

The rotation was a disaster, especially after the one average pitcher on the staff, Mike Boddicker, was flipped in a midseason deal. But that trade brought back Brady Anderson and Curt Schilling. Neither of whom were ready for the majors at that point, but Anderson ended up sticking in Baltimore for 14 years, most of them real good ones, and Schilling ended up with a borderline Hall of Fame career. Of course, none of the good parts of that career happened in Baltimore unless they were in a different teams’ uniform. Still! 

The Rockies don’t have any of that. Veteran Kris Bryant is suffering from back problems that have mostly kept him off of the field in 2025, but his bat has been gone for a couple of years now, too. There’s a Tettleton equivalent in backstop Hunter Goodman, who is hitting .299/.354/.497 in what appears to be a breakout campaign, and Jordan Beck (.264/.325/.528) has started strong, but this lineup doesn’t have the depth of the 1988 Orioles, a team that is likely one of the 50 worst in the history of baseball after adjusting for era, strength of competition, and more. And their pitching is at least as bad as that Baltimore squad’s, too. 

It doesn’t help that it’s not like the Rockies being terrible is a surprise. This is a continuation of the status quo. The 2021 team went 74-87, which probably did not feel at the time like it was going to be as good as things got for a while.  The ‘22 squad lost 94 games. The 2023 team lost 103, and 2024’s “improved” to 101 defeats. Dating back to the start of 2023, the Rockies are just 127-239. A bounce back, like some members of the ‘88 Orioles experienced, isn’t necessarily something that can be relied on here, as there isn’t anything to bounce back to that looks meaningfully different from where they are.

The 1904 Senators — known as the Minnesota Twins from 1961 to the present — didn’t start quite as poorly as those 1988 Orioles, but they made up for it later on. They would finish the season 38-113-6, in dead last in the majors with 14 fewer wins than the next-worst Philadelphia Phillies, and 13 more losses than the only other club to hit the century mark. They played just 41 games against teams with a worse than .500 record and went a modest 18-23 in those games, in part because there were just eight clubs in the AL at that time, and most of them spent their season beating up on the Senators. Which helped them to a record well over .500 in the first place: in those games against teams that ended up over .500, the Senators were just 20-90 for the year.

The Senators had two players produce above-average seasons at the plate: first baseman Jake Stahl (118 OPS+) and outfielder Frank Huelsman (112 OPS+). The team, as a whole, produced a line of .227/.275/.288 — remember, this was the Dead Ball era, but the ball seemed even deader for Washington’s hitters — and an OPS+  of 79. The pitching was even worse, with no starter even coming close to being considered average, never mind above it, and the staff as a whole producing an ERA+ of 74. 

They began their season 0-10 in April, and with one exception were actually more like a standard 100-loss team for the rest of the year, but that exception was a 4-19 June with a .174 winning percentage: in combination with the win-less April, the Senators never really had a chance, and they’d finish with what is now the fourth-worst winning percentage (.252) in modern MLB history (1901 and onward), as well as the eighth-most losses ever, despite playing in a shorter season of 154 games. 

The Rockies, by the way, currently have a team OPS+ of 72, and team ERA+ of 84. A bit worse on offense than the ‘04 Senators, but a bit better on the mound. Not exactly a comfort.

This is looking far-forward, but the next teams up on the list of history that the Rockies would love to stop chasing any time now are the 1932 Red Sox — they briefly interrupt the Senators’ run of anti-dominance with the worst records ever for a team through 60 and 61 games — and then it’s the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics from there on out, until a very recent addition to the list, the 2024 White Sox, arrive on the scene 140 games in, when they were 31-109. The ‘32 Sox would lose 111 games and finish with the 12th-worst winning percentage ever — a 117-loss pace in a 162-game season — while the 1916 Athletics actually did lose 117 games, despite playing just 154 of them, but are better known for holding the worst winning percentage in history at .235.

The 2025 Rockies, 42 games in, have a winning percentage of .167. It bears repeating: the Rockies need to turn things around, and in a hurry, if the wrong kind of history is to be averted.

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“The most impressive thing about Pete and what is, I think, the hardest thing for young players to grasp onto, is not only a belief in themselves, but how they can formulate a routine that maximizes their potential,” Swanson said. “He’s smart, he’s really instinctual, and he’s been able to feel his way through what works for him and what doesn’t. 

“To be able to do that at a really young age is impressive.”

Why is it all coming together now? Crow-Armstrong finally has an established role on the roster as the Cubs’ starting center fielder — unlike last year, when he began the season in the minor leagues. He no longer had to worry about proving he should be in the big leagues; this year he knew he belonged. He’s always been an elite defender, but digging into his numbers at the plate, Crow-Armstrong has made a huge jump in his ability to barrel the ball, which has led to a power surge. And he’s hitting right-handed pitchers better than he ever has at the big-league level. He’s already collected 10 doubles in 124 at-bats facing righties this season, compared to 11 doubles in 285 at-bats against them last year.

Plus, suiting up alongside a World Series champion like Tucker served as a wake-up call to Crow-Armstrong that his hard work was paying off.

“Signing a guy like that was pretty exciting,” Crow-Armstrong recently told FOX Sports. “Before he was my teammate for the last few months, that guy was a very renowned, revered player. It was always fun for me to watch him. That was kind of a cool one. That was one of the reminders, like, hey, you’re a big leaguer. You’re playing with Kyle Tucker. You’re playing with Dansby Swanson. So that stuff’s cool. It gave me that little-kid feeling.”

Given Crow-Armstrong’s bold, yet grounded personality (he dyes his hair blue and “couldn’t care less” about what the media will say about him) and his high-profile journey to the major leagues, it can be easy to forget that he’s just 23 years old with less than 200 MLB games under his belt.

Known as PCA, he was drafted by the Mets in the first round (19th overall pick) in 2020 out of Harvard-Westlake High School, a hotbed of major-league talent in the Los Angeles area. While he was climbing up the minor-league ladder in the Mets farm system, they traded him in July 2021 to the Cubs for infielder Javier Baez. In 2023, Crow-Armstrong made his major-league debut as a 21-year-old September call-up. He was on track to make the Cubs’ Opening Day roster last year before they signed Cody Bellinger in spring training. But it didn’t take long for the Cubs to promote him for good. 

He was called up in April last year and has grown into an essential piece of the Cubs roster ever since, racking up a team-best defensive WAR (22.4) in that span. While Crow-Armstrong has always turned heads with his top-tier sprint speed and superb glove — he leads all MLB position players with a Fielding Run Value of 10 this year, and it’s not even close — early scouting reports suggested his lack of power was a major concern and predicted his ceiling would be a 10-15 home run hitter. 

“That’s no secret,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I think defense is easier than hitting, but I was always aware that I was viewed as this one-dimensional player. That was always fine. I didn’t really start hitting for power until I got into Triple A, anyways. It was fine. I thought that was a fair criticism, a fair assessment to put on a young player who hasn’t proven anything.”

Now, Crow-Armstrong is busy proving them wrong. 

But those who knew him while he was a minor-leaguer for the Mets were sure he would be a star in the league one day. Crow-Armstrong built a strong friendship with Mets infielders Mark Vientos and Brett Baty when they played together in the Mets’ instructional league during the 2020 pandemic year, spending every day with each other when the minor-league season was canceled. Crow-Armstrong still has a support system in Vientos and Baty nearly four years after he was traded. 

“​​We would call each other constantly, especially when he was on the Cubs, and I was over here,” Vientos said. “We would just have check-ins to see how we were doing mentally.” 

“He’s going to be a phenomenal player for a really long time,” Vientos added. “He’s true to himself. He’s authentic. That’s what makes him who he is.”

“Anybody who’s around him knows how hard he works,” Baty said. “So it was just a matter of time before people noticed. And he’s always been a tremendous hitter.”

His latest home run, a towering solo shot to right field just shy of 400 feet, got nearly 40,000 fans on their feet at Wrigley Field on Tuesday. His belief in himself is just as evident as his swag, and that confidence is infectious in Chicago. The Cubs are 25-18, first place in the NL Central, competing as a legitimate playoff contender for the first time in several years. So much of their early ascendancy is due to Crow-Armstrong’s hot bat and Gold Glove-caliber defense, and now their future success relies on him staying steady throughout the full season.

Crow-Armstrong plans to sustain his hot start by relying on repetition and consistency at the plate, rather than getting caught up in day-to-day results. But he’s also prepared for an inevitable dip in production, because going 3-for-4 every night isn’t realistic. Still, equipped with a no-pressure mindset, he’s focused on maintaining his approach for a long, successful career. If he can stick to his game plan, he’s shaping up to earn his first career All-Star appearance this season, and this is just the beginning of what Crow-Armstrong has in store. After all, he’s only 23 years old and is already becoming a household name.

“I started to find that, it’s like, I hit 10 home runs last year. I already hit nine [in 34 games] this year,” he said. “I’ve definitely had to have my moments of just like, dude, you’re doing just fine. But, I still want a lot more for myself.”

Deesha Thosar covers Major League Baseball as a reporter and columnist for FOX Sports. Follow her on X at @DeeshaThosar.

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