Last Night in Baseball: Orioles-Royals Was a Pitching Duel Until it Wasn't

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: Orioles-Royals got wild You might think, looking at the final score of 7-5 in the Orioles-Royals game from Monday, that this one was fairly offense-centric throughout. The truth is that all but two runs were scored from the ninth inning onward — everything changed as the game approached its original endpoint, and escalated from there. Observe! In the bottom of the second, with the game still scoreless, Royals’ right fielder Jac Caglianone hit his first homer of the year, off of starting pitcher Kyle Bradish. Despite giving up 10 hits and walking three, Bradish gave up just that one run in his 5.1 innings of work: the next four Orioles’ relievers would allow just one hit and no runs combined. Seth Lugo went seven shutout innings against Baltimore, and then Matt Strahm pitched a scoreless eighth for a hold. Closer Lucas Erceg got the O’s down to their last strike, with Kansas City up 1-0… and then he blew it. Catcher Samuel Basallo tied things up, 1-1, and the two teams headed to extras in what had been, to that point, a pitching-focused battle. While the 10th was scoreless and continued that trend, it was also the end of it. With two outs and the only baserunner on Blaze Alexander, who was placed there to start the 11th, DH Dylan Beavers managed a single to put the Orioles ahead for the first time all night. The lead did not last. Center fielder Kyle Isbel bunted Isaac Collins to third to kick off the bottom of the inning and put the tying run for Kansas City 90 feet away. Shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. then singled Isbel home to make things even once more. The Royals wouldn’t score again, however, bringing Baltimore back to the plate, where Basallo once again made his presence felt with an RBI single to give the O’s another lead. This wouldn’t be a one and done like every other inning in the game for both sides, however. Baltimore poured it on from here. Second baseman Jeremiah Jackson followed Basallo’s single with one of his own, then third baseman Weston Wilson — who had entered as a pinch-runner earlier — drew the walk to load the bases. Center fielder Leody Taveras would then hit his second homer of the year, clearing the bases with a grand slam; 7-2, Orioles. Cameron Foster came on in relief for Baltimore to try to close out this five-run lead, and it looked like he might falter in that. DH Salvador Perez led off with a single, then right fielder Lane Thomas walked to load the bases. Nick Loftin, who was playing second after coming in as a pinch-hitter earlier in the game, doubled in three runs, making it 7-5 with no outs. That was all Kansas City could manage, though: the next three batters were retired by Foster in order, with a backwards K to wrap it up against Isbel. The Orioles now sit just one game under .500 and 2.5 back in the AL East, which is collectively off to a slow start. The AL Central isn’t looking much better off, but the Royals have managed to sink to the bottom of it, anyway, thanks to losing what is now eight-straight. MLB’s strikeout leader is Dylan Cease There were some understandable questions about why the Blue Jays would be willing to give Dylan Cease a seven-year, $210 million deal this offseason, given the right-hander posted a 4.55 ERA in 2025 with the Padres. Teams are looking at far more than a basic stat like ERA when they make these decisions, though, and something no one could question was Cease’s ability to throw swing-and-miss pitches. Whatever Toronto saw that made him worthy of a franchise-record deal for a pitcher seems to be on display for all now, as Cease struck out 12 Angels on Monday in a 5-2 Blue Jays’ W, tying his own earlier mark for the most in a game so far in 2026, and now leads the majors in strikeouts with 44 on the season. Cease is also the fastest Blue Jays pitcher ever to 44 strikeouts, per Blue Jays Nation; whatever little adjustment Toronto thought he needed to unlock his best self seems to have taken hold already. Of course, this is five starts and 25.2 innings, so no need to hand the righty the AL Cy Young Award just yet, but still: this is one hell of a start. Both referring to last night and 2026 as a whole for Cease. Big Dumper dongs Cal Raleigh bashed 60 homers for the Mariners in 2025, a record for the team, for catchers and for switch-hitters. He hasn’t been nearly as powerful out of the gate in 2026, but he has shown some flashes of that pop. We got another example that it’s still there yesterday, when Big Dumper went the other way on a sinker to the outside part of the zone, sending it 382 feet into the bullpen. That’s Raleigh’s third homer of the year; through 24 games last season, he had nine. Still, Raleigh always being a 60-homer guy — or even a 50-homer guy — wasn’t an automatic just because it was done once. There have been just 10 such seasons in MLB’s long history, and all. The more important thing are the signs that Raleigh can get out of his slump, which has impacted more than just his power. Hitting a ball 382 feet the other way is one such sign that Raleigh will bounce back, maybe sooner than later. Rodriguez’s awkward adjustment Nintendo used to have majority ownership of the Mariners, but now, the video game developer and publisher is just a minority investor. Apparently that’s all that’s needed for center fielder Julio Rodriguez to have some video game-esque reactions and adjustments to a fly ball hit at him, though. Look at this weirdo — the play, not Rodriguez. That ball just kept hooking, which Rodriguez did not account for, but he still made a ridiculous change in direction himself for a catch that looked like a buggy animation from a baseball video game instead of a real one. No not Honkbal, Honk Ball The square footage of a baseball field is immense, the probabilities for where a ball in play could land impacted by everything from the ability of the hitter and pitcher themselves to where the ball is in the zone and where the bat meets it and how hard. Somehow, this ball was struck in such a way that it landed near a goose that had otherwise been unbothered, and that bird took flight as a result. Everyone was unharmed, that’s the important thing. Except for this baseball that Cubs’ shortstop Dansby Swanson had crushed an inning before, anyway. And also the psyche of Phillies’ fans, that’s probably not at its strongest at the moment. Philadelphia dropped its sixth game in a row here, managing just one run against the Cubs. That’s just one more than the goose recorded. Ohtani makes it 52 Dodgers’ star Shohei Ohtani did not make everyone wait long to see if he could extend his on-base streak to 52 games, tying the longest such streak of the last decade. In the third inning against Rockies’ starter Jose Quintana, the DH hit a liner to right for his first hit of the game. While Ohtani had reached earlier on an error, those do not count for on-base streaks, but even this hit didn’t prove necessary, either, since he picked up a pair of walks later in the game, as well. He is now a single game away from moving into the top 25 for longest on-base streaks in MLB history. The top of the mountain is still a ways away, however: that Ted Williams guy was quite the hitter himself, and he made it on in 84-consecutive games back in 1949. Still! Ohtani can rocket most of the way up the list before he even runs out of April — the top few spots aside, history’s longest on-base streaks are mostly clustered together — fewer have reached where Ohtani is now, and even fewer have gone much further than this. D’aww No babies were harmed in the making of this catch. Listen, you don’t have anywhere to go — there’s a baby in your hands. The ball is coming right at you, so your options are to attempt to catch it or at least deflect it from the direction of the child, or let the ball hit you, which hey, might hurt enough to make it tough to hold onto the baby. The right call was made here. The better call? Giving the baseball to the baby afterward. The rest of this Dodgers-Rockies game wasn’t quite so cute for Colorado fans — they lost, 12-3 — but hey. Foul ball baby! Friends don’t rob friends of hits Elly De La Cruz and Junior Caminero were happy to see each other prior to the Reds-Rays tilt. The two early 20s Dominican-born infielders are close friends — Caminero described De La Cruz as his "brother" postgame, even, per MLB — so it was no surprise to see them embrace before they faced off on Monday. Then the game started, though, and De La Cruz showed no mercy to Caminero on this ball hit to the shortstop’s right. Make sure you watch through for the reaction by Caminero. In that exchange where he called De La Cruz a brother postgame? Caminero also joked through an interpreter that, "I'm not going to give him any food tomorrow. We were talking about exchanging something, but I'm not going to give him anything." Man, baseball is a rough game. Red Sox win early Patriots’ Day matchup The Red Sox played their traditional Marathon Monday early game on Patriots’ Day, this time to wrap up a four-game series against the Tigers. Boston was attempting to even things up and not drop the series to Detroit, which had won the previous two games, and sent Sonny Gray to the mound to do it. Gray had to be lifted after 2.2 innings with hamstring tightness, however, so the bullpen had to hop in early. In the fourth, 23-year-old rookie third baseman Hao-Yu Lee picked up his first career hit and RBI with a single off reliever Zack Kelly to tie things up 2-2. A couple of innings later, pinch-hitter Jahmai Jones subbed in for Kerry Carpenter and delivered a hit to left-center to drive in the go-ahead run. Boston’s bats would wake up from here on. With the game tied in the bottom of the seventh, Ceddanne Rafaela pinch-hit and drove in two runs — nearly three — with a single to right, to put the Sox up 5-3. That was not going to be enough to win, but the Sox drove in another before the inning ended when backstop Carlos Narvaez singled in a run, and then Boston added two more in the eighth. And good thing, too, because the Tigers made it 8-6 against relievers Ryan Watson and Aroldis Chapman before running out of outs in the ninth. Boston needed this W badly, to avoid dropping alone into fifth place in the AL East. The Tigers could have used it, too, in the way all teams need a win, but Detroit is at least just half-a-game out in the AL Central, not staring up from the bottom like the Sox. Boston gets the Yankees next, starting Tuesday, while Detroit takes on a Brewers team that is in last place, sure, but is also 12-9 while doing it — a better record than the Tigers have.