Recaps
[AZ Central] Diamondbacks live to fight another day with comeback win over Yankees – With a 2-0 count against Yankees lefty Brent Headrick, Arenado was a smidge in front of a fastball and pulled it barely foul, the ball sailing just a few feet to the left of the foul pole. He didn’t miss on the very next pitch, launching into the left field seats to give the Diamondbacks a 6-4 lead. “It was pretty cool, obviously, a big moment,” Arenado said. “It just felt good to come through. I feel like I haven’t
come through a whole lot with runners in scoring position the way I would like to this year. It felt good to give us the lead and help us kind of take a deep breath a little bit.” In the eighth, he made a barehand grab of a Lombard roller and unleashed a perfect throw to first. “He gripped the baseball as he was picking it up,” Lovullo said. “He picked it up with two fingers. I said, ‘Did I just see what I thought I saw?’ He said, ‘Yes, I grip to throw on those types of plays.’
[Dbacks.com] Arenado’s 2nd-chance slam breathes life into D-backs’ postseason hopes – “The fact that we’ve won a lot of baseball games here over the past 10 years and put ourselves in a good position year after year after year to get to the big dance, I’m proud of that,” said Lovullo. “But that’s never the final destination. “If you’re looking at a full body of work, this state should be proud of what these players do and what they accomplish every single day. I know it’s not the 2001 team. We want to get there. I want to give that team company. I want this community, this state to talk about two baseball teams – that 2001 team and then the current team that’s won a world championship. It just takes a lot of work, and we’re going to figure this out.”
Team news
[SI] Corbin Burnes Blown off Mound in Disastrous 3rd Inning vs Yankees – Burnes has now allowed nine runs in 10.1 innings, for a 7.84 ERA, giving up five homers in the process. His velocity on the cutter, already down to a career low 92.7 coming into Sunday’s game, bottomed out at 90.9. The movement profile on his signature pitch is a shadow of it’s former self as well. Simply put, the cutter doesn’t cut right now. A right-handers cutter, by definition should break glove side. Fully 34% of his cutters thrown heading into today were actually moving to the arm side, not glove side. In Sunday’s outing, 19 of 39, 48% of cutters broke armside. During his peak years that number was about 2-3%, but had crept up to 11-16% in recent years prior to 2026.
[Burn City Sports] The Diamondbacks’ Wild Card hopes come down to these final six games – With six games left on their schedule, the D-Backs are four games behind the Philadelphia Phillies for the final National League wild-card spot and five games behind the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres, who are tied for the top wild-card positions. That leaves the club with one simple task: Win as many of its remaining six games as possible and hope the teams ahead of it give it enough of an opening. The first part is obvious, as Arizona now heads to Colorado to take on the Rockies for three games. Then, the Snakes will head to San Diego for their final three games of the regular season — and possibly the most important ones yet if they’re not eliminated by that time.The second part is harder.
[Sporting News] Nolan Arenado refusing to land on IL for Diamondbacks was a good thing – Arenado has been a solid contributor for the Diamondbacks overall this season, and it would make sense for Arizona to protect the veteran third baseman if he wasn’t 100%. But Arenado didn’t want to hit the injured list, refusing a potential placement on the IL. That refusal has been a major boost for Arizona. Since the start of September, roughly around when the Diamondbacks would’ve asked Arenado to hit the IL, he’s been one of the best hitters in MLB. In 16 games and 56 at-bats, Arenado has 18 hits, seven runs scored, two doubles, five home runs, nine RBIs, seven walks, a .321 batting average, and a 1.031 OPS. [Update: now six HR, 13 RBI and a slash of .317/.397/.650 for an OPS of 1.047]
And, elsewhere…
[MLB.com] Red Sox clinch postseason spot that once seemed improbable – Five months ago, it was easy to wonder if chief baseball officer Craig Breslow made the right decision when he dismissed long-time manager Cora and dismissed or reassigned six coaches after just 27 games on a stunning Saturday night in Baltimore. There were no regrets or second guesses by Sunday… The road back to contention started with a four-game sweep of the Yankees at Fenway from June 25-28. It continued on July 3, when the Sox began what would become a winning streak of 15 games, tying the franchise record set by the 1946 pennant winners of Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Dom DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky. And even after that streak was snapped, the Sox shortly thereafter ripped off another nine-game winning streak, giving them the best 30-game stretch (27-3) in team history.
[AP] Atlanta Braves clinch 7th NL East title in 9 years – “I told these guys winning the division is really tough,” [manager Walt] Weiss said. “I know it’s the first step, but it takes six months to do it. It takes everybody, and we used everybody. Virtually everyone that got an opportunity stepped up and helped us win games this year. Special group in that way. Very close group.” Atlanta has won 24 division titles, tying the Dodgers for the most since the inception of the divisional format in 1969. Atlanta has won the NL East 19 times in 32 seasons.” Just felt like they responded well to certain messages,” Weiss said. “I thought the way they competed was high-level stuff. I felt like the makeup of this team was really good. Coming off a tough year, I think a lot of it was getting them to believe that they were still really good.”
Hungry (2026)
- Rating: C
- Dir: James Nunn
- Star: Madison Davenport, Joaquim de Almeida, Tracey Bonner, Michel Curiel
I get why the makers gave this the title they did – obviously a veiled reference to the game, ‘Hungry Hungry Hippos’. Yet I can’t help feeling they missed an opportunity. I mean, Hippocalypse Now was right there… The storyline is basic. A bunch of tourists go on a cruise, piloted by Rodrigo, looking for alligators. Only, something larger, nastier and more rotund shows up to overturn their boat and leave them stuck up trees, hoping for rescue. Fortunately, the hippo responsible is not the rare tree-climbing variety. Help, in the form of former big-game hunter Walker, is slow to arrive. This allows plenty of time for the stranded tourists to bicker with each other, reveal secrets, carry out poorly-considered actions, and fall out of the trees like so many over-ripe mangoes.
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