Last Night In Baseball: Cal Raleigh Returns From Injury And Wins It For Mariners

There is always baseball happening — almost too much baseball for one person to follow themselves.

Don’t worry, we’re here to help you by figuring out what you missed but shouldn’t have. Here are all the best moments from last night in Major League Baseball:

It’s been a disappointing season for Mariners’ star catcher Cal Raleigh. His 2026 started slow, as he struggled in the World Baseball Classic and then hit just .159/.250/.261 through his first 23 games of the season. He finally started to hit for some power after this, but was still a little too totally on or totally off in his performances, and then ended up on the IL for the first time in his career with an oblique strain in mid-May.

It’s mid-June now, though, and Raleigh returned to the Mariners’ lineup after tearing through a rehab stint in the minors. He had just one hit on Tuesday in three at-bats against the Orioles — along with a walk in another plate appearance — but it was a big one: Raleigh drove in two of the Mariners’ three runs in the bottom of the seventh with a bases-loaded single to center, scoring left fielder Victor Robles and shortstop Colt Emerson.

The Mariners would end up winning 3-1, in a game where pitching took center stage: Logan Gilbert went seven innings for Seattle, with just three baserunners and one run against 10 strikeouts, while Baltimore’s Brandon Young went six innings with three runs allowed before handing it off to a bullpen that kept the M’s in check the rest of the way.

Seattle is just 38-36 on the year, which is enough for first place in an AL West that can’t seem to get out of its own way, but the Mariners need to be better to take on the best teams in the American League. Getting Raleigh back — as well as infielder J.P. Crawford, who also came off of the IL on Tuesday — could play a significant role in making that happen.

The Pirates had fallen under .500 for the first time since the very early days of the 2026 season with a loss to the Athletics on Monday. However, on Tuesday, Pittsburgh was able to even things up once again rather than start to dig a deeper hole. The Bucs even managed to come from behind to pull off the W.

Down 5-3 in the top of the seventh, left fielder Bryan Reynolds came to the plate with first baseman and leadoff hitter Spencer Horwitz on base. Reynolds would launch his second homer of the game, off of reliever Hogan Harris, and tie things up 5-5.

It wasn’t anywhere near the distance or speed of his earlier dinger — that traveled 408 feet — but it counted the same on the scoreboard. From here, the Pirates’ bullpen actually managed to hold its opponent scoreless, which has not been happening nearly enough of late and is part of why Pittsburgh has fallen to .500 in the first place. And that set up second baseman Brandon Lowe to be the hero in the ninth.

Lowe, whom Pittsburgh acquired in a three-team offseason trade with the Rays and Astros, has been excellent for the Pirates, batting .239/.321/.511 with 18 homers and 35 extra-base hits in 68 games. On Tuesday, however, he had come to the plate four times and struck out in three of them… until that last at-bat of the day, when he sent an Elvis Alvarado slider back at nearly 105 mph and 371 feet for what ended up being the game-winning homer. 

The A’s lost, yes, but you can’t blame shortstop Jacob Wilson for that. Playing against his dad’s old team, the son of Jack Wilson had a slide at home plate you just need to see to believe.

He violently flipped his whole body, and also managed to make it a graceful move that avoided the tag — just incredible work.

The Dodgers and Rays matched up in a low-scoring affair where the starting pitchers were dealing. Drew Rasmussen started for Tampa Bay, going seven innings with seven strikeouts, no walks and six hits allowed, while Justin Wrobleski took the mound for Los Angeles and fired off six shutout innings with five strikeouts and no walks while allowing just three hits.

The two were basically equals… except for on one pitch. And to be fair to Rasmussen, Wrobleski didn’t have to face Shohei Ohtani. 

Rasmussen left a cutter that didn’t cut hard enough over the plate, and Ohtani drove it 427 feet to center. That was the lone run he allowed, and also the run of the entire game — both bullpens carried on the work of their starters and kept this one close. Not close enough for the Rays, though, who fell to 2.5 games behind the Yankees in the AL East with the loss. The Dodgers, meanwhile, officially have the most wins in MLB with 47, but are still slightly behind the Braves in winning percentage thanks to having played three more games with two of those resulting in losses.

George Springer has had a tough year with the Blue Jays after an incredible 2025, but that’s also basically the story for Toronto as a whole this season. Lucky for the Jays, though, is that they are facing the Red Sox this week, and Boston has had an even worse version of whatever is ailing Toronto in 2026.

The Jays would win, 6-1, with the big highlight being Springer’s performance. He walked in the first inning, then had a sacrifice fly to drive in the first run of the game in the top of the third. Springer singled in the fifth before stealing second, and in the ninth got a hold of a 90.5 mph cutter left up in the zone by Ryan Watson and absolutely crushed it.

That ball went 438 feet with an exit velocity of just over 109 mph — Springer looked like his old self all game, but especially on that blast that ended up not only out of Fenway, but headed toward the Pike. It was also the 300th homer of Springer’s 13-year career. It’s unclear how many more dingers the 36-year-old DH has in him at this point, but more games like Tuesday’s could mean there are plenty of balls left to bash in his future.

The Nationals got a brand new front office before 2026, and the expectation that yet another rebuild was coming attached to it. Maybe not, though: Washington is 39-35 after picking up a win against the Royals on Tuesday, and the Nats are now in possession of one of the NL’s three wild-card spots because of it.

Now listen, there’s a lot of season left, so things can change, both for the better and worse. Right now, though, Washington has a winning record and a positive run differential, and is 27-17 since April 26, when they won a series against the now first-place White Sox. The Nationals have still-young budding stars in shortstop CJ Abrams and right fielder James Wood. The pitching is… a work in progress. But if the Nats are good enough at the deadline, maybe that can be addressed, well ahead of schedule.

As far as the present goes, infielder Curtis Mead came up to bat with two runners on in a 3-3 game in the bottom of the seventh, right after Washington had allowed Kansas City to tie it up in the top of the frame. Mead untied the game with authority.

That ball traveled 424 feet, and gave the Nats all they needed for victory. The Royals’ slide continues, but the Nationals? Things are looking up sooner than expected in Washington.

What a shot from Drake Baldwin in his return to the Braves’ lineup.

This Braves-Giants contest hasn’t been canceled, but it was suspended due to the rain. And once it actually completes, then Atlanta’s slugging catcher, Baldwin, will officially have a 473-foot homer on his résumé.

Baldwin had not played since May 18, owing to an oblique injury that landed him on the IL. Considering that he was hitting .303/.389/.543 with 13 homers at the time of that move, it’s safe to say Atlanta missed him even if it continued to win in his absence. Now that they have him back, well, the idea that the Braves are MLB’s best team becomes that much easier to believe. 

In this battle between first-place teams, one looked a lot more like it than the other. The White Sox got a rare bad start out of Davis Martin, and it was bad: his ERA shot up from 2.41 to 3.31 in the course of 3 ⅓ innings, as he allowed nine runs — all earned — on eight hits, three walks and three home runs. The Yankees had Martin’s number, and it didn’t help matters that Chicago’s bats were mostly quieted by Gerrit Cole in his six innings of work.

The game started off promising enough for Chicago, with DH Andrew Benintendi going yard to put the White Sox up 1-0 in the first…

…but the Yankees answered back in the bottom of the second when center fielder Spencer Jones tied things up with a dinger of his own.

From there, the game got ugly. Left fielder Cody Bellinger singled in a pair in the bottom of the third, then Jones drew a bases-loaded walk to make it 4-1 before José Caballero tacked on another run with a sac fly. In the bottom of the fourth, first baseman Ben Rice connected for his 20th home run of the season, a two-run shot.

Bellinger would reach base, then DH Paul Goldschmidt would hit his 10th homer of the year to make it 9-1 — Goldschmidt had just 10 homers in all of 2025, but he’s already matched that number this season.

He’s having a great 2026, batting .298/.367/.547, and the Yankees need that kind of support from him with Aaron Judge out for a considerable time this summer owing to a stress fracture in his ribs. You never would have known that Judge was on the IL given the 12-2 score, though, especially with Martin on the mound for Chicago.

The traveling Tartan Army, supporters of Scotland’s national team, have made their way from Boston to New York, and appeared at the Yankees’ game on Tuesday. Hey, the longer Scotland is in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the better the chances that the Tartan Army comes to see your local sports team, too.

The Guardians were not able to take advantage of the White Sox losing to the Yankees, as the Brewers were able to eke out a 2-1 win on a night when Cleveland’s pitchers were nearly as good as Milwaukee’s.

The difference came down to the Brewers scoring first: second baseman Brice Turang hit a 409-foot home run to center off of starting pitcher Slade Cecconi in the fourth, and that gave Milwaukee a 1-0 lead that would hold until the top of the seventh.

There, Cleveland tied it up on a single by third baseman Gabriel Arias, but it was all the offense the Guardians could muster: both star third baseman José Ramírez and outfielder Angel Martínez — the team’s home run leader in 2026 — were placed on the IL on Tuesday, and it sure felt like it against the Brewers.

In the bottom of the seventh, Milwaukee erased the tie when center fielder Garrett Mitchell unloaded on a slider from reliever Hunter Gaddis. Mitchell blasted it 440 feet to right-center, and it was 2-1, Brewers, which was also the final score.

The Guardians remain tied atop the AL Central with the White Sox, at 39-34, but it’s going to be difficult not to see every loss like this as a missed opportunity given that Cleveland lost quite a bit of its pop in one afternoon. The Brewers, meanwhile, were able to maintain a 4.5-game lead on the Cardinals in the NL Central despite St. Louis taking out the Padres again.