Last Night in Baseball: Ketel Marte Hit a Walk-Off Homer You Must See

There is always baseball going on—almost too much baseball for one person to keep up with.

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

Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte left the Dodgers on Thursday, giving Arizona a series split with the surging NL West leader. It’s an incredible home run, one worth celebrating (unless, of course, you’re a Dodgers fan), so let’s go through the moment piece by piece to pick out the best parts.

First the thing in question, out of Tanner Scott:

1. The home run itself was incredible. Marte took a 97.2 mph fastball low in the zone and hit it 431 feet, with an exit velocity of 113 mph. Which is a scientific way of saying he crushed that ball.
2. D-Backs third baseman Nolan Arenado is caught on camera saying what appears to be, “Why!? Why would you throw that???” as he goes out to celebrate.
3. As Marte rounds second and heads for third, he mimes taking a jump shot.
4. As Marte turns the corner at third, he notices he’s being followed by his double play partner, shortstop Geraldo Perdomo. Perdomo had the Gatorade bucket and gave chase, but Marte avoided him and continued on his way home.
5. However, he gets smacked with the bubblegum bucket while still on his way home.
6. Perdomo doesn’t give up just because he missed Marte on the first pass, but his second attempt isn’t successful either. Instead of Marte getting drenched, it’s starter Eduardo Rodriguez who eats a faceful of water.
7. It’s not shown in this video, but Perdomo then got another bucket of water and dumped it on another starter, Merrill Kelly.

Baseball rules. Oh, and check this out.

Add that bat flip to the above list because it’s expert level even without the mime. Marte has three walk-off hits already on the season, the most of anyone in the league. And there’s a whole lot of 2026 left too.

Speaking of walk-offs and a whole lot of them, the Chicago Cubs picked up their seventh of the season on Thursday, the most in MLB. “Are the kids good?” is not an easy question to answer, between this, the two 10-game winning streaks and the 10-game losing streak. But at least it’s a team that wants to could be good, and with all these wild-card spots, that might be enough even in the more crowded National League.

The hero of the day was center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, but before the walk-off he went yard in the sixth to put the Cubs on the board and cut the Athletics’ lead to 4-1.

The A’s would answer with another pair of runs, but left fielder Ian Happ then undid that advance with a two-run shot in the seventh. Still not nearly enough, but patience: the big round was coming.

In the bottom of the ninth, Joel Kuhnel came on in relief of Mark Leiter Jr. for the A’s. Everything started to unravel right then and there. First baseman Michael Busch led off the inning with a double, then Happ hit another to cut the lead to 6-4. Second baseman Nico Hoerner singled Happ to third, but then was caught stealing – two outs. Moisés Ballesteros ripped a single to short that deflected off Alika Williams, and third baseman Zack Gelof was also unable to reel it in. Happ scored; 6-5, A’s.

Seiya Suzuki entered as a pinch hitter and singled, putting the tying run in scoring position. Luis Medina then entered the game in relief of Kuhnel, but he gave up a game-tying single to the first batter he faced, shortstop Dansby Swanson, whose knock also sent Suzuki 90 feet from home plate. It brought PCA up with a chance to be the hero and he delivered.

A complete meltdown by the Athletics in the ninth, but take heart, A’s fans: this just lost the game, not the series, and with the Mariners off Thursday, the damage to the standings was only half a game.

There was also this fun bit of gameplay before said meltdown. Designated hitter Shea Langeliers joined an odd club when he homered in traditional fashion in the fourth inning…

…and then in the sixth hit one inside the park for his second of the day.

Per MLB’s Sarah LongLangeliers is the 15th player in A’s history to have a multi-homer game with one inside the park, and just the fifth in the divisional era (1969-2026). And also per Alongit’s the eighth time it’s happened at Wrigley Field and the first time since 1991, when Cubs legend Ryne Sandberg accomplished the feat.

It’s also worth pointing out that it was Pete Crow-Armstrong who missed Langeliers’ second homer in the sky and let it fall behind him. PCA managed to make up for that mistake and so little by the end of the game, huh?

While the Cubs were able to win a game on the Brewers — Milwaukee lost to the Giants in that series finale, 12-9 — they were unable to do the same to the NL Central’s second-place team, the Pirates. Pittsburgh took on the Houston Astros in the rubber game at Daikin Park, and it went from close to not all at once.

The Pirates were up 1-0 entering the sixth inning as Astros’ starter Kai-Wei Teng had done a successful job of keeping the Bucs’ bats quiet, limiting them to one run and three hits. The sixth was a disaster, however: Teng allowed four consecutive hits, two of them for extra bases, and the Pirates were up 4-0 with a runner still on when he was relieved.

Second baseman Brandon Lowe led off with a double, then DH Bryan Reynolds singled him home to make it 2-0. Right fielder Ryan O’Hearn followed with his ninth homer of the year, then third baseman Nick Gonzales knocked Teng out of the game with a single.

An error by Jeremy Peña at shortstop allowed Gonzales to come around and score to make it 5-0 later in the inning, and while Houston would hold the Pirates scoreless the rest of the way, the damage was already done.

Reliever Carmen Mlodzinski gave up a run to the Astros, but earned a four-inning save by being otherwise extremely effective, and that was the series. Pittsburgh moved to just 4.5 games behind the Brewers in the Central, and also sits a half-game up for a wild-card spot.

There was one bright spot for the Astros in the loss, however. Third baseman Isaac Paredes became just the fourth Mexican player in MLB to hit at least 100 career home runs with this sixth-inning dinger from Mlodzinski.

The other three players? Vinny Castillo is the all-time leader with 320, followed by Jorge Orta (130) and Aurelio Rodríguez (120). Since Paredes is a) a pretty good hitter and b) only 27 years old, he will climb further up this list.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has had a power drought lately, but he’s still hitting plenty of singles and walks. When the opportunity to stretch a single into a double came up against the Braves, the Blue Jays’ first baseman seized it, even coming up against the strong arm of right fielder Ronald Acuña Jr.

Guerrero got the best of Acuña there, but the real gold is in the finger after the game. Pretty good too, considering Guerrero just looked happy to still be alive after making it to second safe. It’s not every day a baserunner wins against Acuña’s arm! It is worth celebrating.

The Blue Jays would end up winning the game 7-2. Toronto has nearly crept back to .500, at 30-33; The Braves are doing quite well despite this loss, though, thanks as Atlanta leads the majors with 42 wins and the fewest losses of anyone.

About the 12-9 Giants win: Once again, right fielder Jung Hoo Lee was at the center of a high-scoring day for San Francisco. He capped his May with a five-hit game against the Rockies in a 19-6 Giants win, and on Thursday he went 4-for-5 with a double, an RBI and three runs scored.

The 27-year-old Lee, now in his third season in the majors, looks to take another step forward offensively. In his rookie season, he hit just .262/.310/.331 for an OPS+ of 85, but then turned in an above-average performance in 2025, hitting .266/.327/.407 for a 110 OPS+. This year so far, he’s added quite a bit of batting average, bringing his line as a whole to .322/.356/.447 and a 132 OPS+.

Part of this is probably batted luck, but he’s also been a little more aggressive at the plate, taking advantage of the pitches he can hit earlier in the count. It has cost him some walks, but it’s hard to argue with the results so far. Baseball is really a series of adjustments back and forth forever.

Treason. That’s all you can label this as. A betrayal at the mound against Twins reliever Justin Lawrence. Here he is, in a tied game, throwing to the mound, as pitchers always do, and a comebacker up the middle hits the mound and sends the ball off its path.

What should have been a ball that hit the pitcher instead hit at the exact wrong spot and angle and shot behind Lawrence and into center field. The game was tied, 6-6, but the Royals had loaded the bases and third baseman Josh Rojas — who had entered the game as a pinch-hitter for Nick Loftin — managed to thread the needle and score two runners to go up 8-6.

The Twins would not answer in the bottom of the inning, and the Royals would win the opener of this four-game series. At 25-38, Kansas City already needs every win it can get to catch up in the AL Central and wild-card races. Taking a series from the Reds and this win is a good start, but that’s all it is so far.