Developments in the Postseason race, Paul Skenes’ 200th K! | Morning Lineup (MLB Daily Recap)

Fly ball deep right field down the line, walk it up, Leo Rivers , a walk up, two run home run good by baseball from mlb.com. This is the Morning Lineup podcast and I’m your host, Anthony Castro. Today is Thursday, September 11th. It is the 24th anniversary of the 911 attacks and we remember those we lost as well as the bravery and unity displayed in this country on that fateful day. Let’s aspire to be beacons of that unity today and every day we’re here to talk ball and on Wednesday we had plenty more intriguing developments in the remaining playoff races. So let’s get you caught up on everything you need to know about baseball today. The Texas Rangers have found the recipe to go on a late season surge and it reads as follows. Have your second baseman fracture his foot on a foul ball. Like what happened to Marcus Simeon lose your workhorse starting pitcher with a sub two , a to a rotator cuff strain. Like what happened to Nathan Eovaldi, lose your center fielder to a right wrist fracture on a hit by pitch. Like what happened to Evan Carter? Lose your star shortstop to an appendectomy. Like what happened to Corey Seager Sprinkle in a right quad strain to your right fielder just for good measure. Like what happened to AOL Garcia , all of these injuries, including a couple more. I didn’t even bother to mention have happened just since the second half of August. It sounds like a recipe for disaster. Instead, it’s been the recipe for the Rangers best baseball of the season. They keep coming up with heroes. And on Wednesday night in the series finale against the first place Brewers, the man of the hour was jake Berger despite falling behind two, nothing early and facing Brewers ace Freddie Peralta. The Rangers got on the board in the second when Berger munched on a Peralta fastball, he swings and hammers that one to center Perkins can run. All he wants. That one is gone. Maybe a late lunch for some folks. A smash burger makes it 2 to 1. In the third. The Rangers manufactured a run to tie it Then took a lead on a ball that scored Josh Smith from third and Then in the fifth, it was time for why not another burger. The burger smashes another one deep out to center and that one is gone. A two over game for Jake Berger. A double burger is death to your cholesterol count. But life for the Rangers in this one as they won 6 to 3 to become the first team to sweep the Brewers. Since opening weekend, the Rangers are incredibly a season best seven games over 500 while the Royals and Guardians are spending this week eating that burgers. But each other with Kansas City using a two run seventh to win 4 to 3 on Wednesday night at Progressive Field. It’s the Rangers really keeping the pressure on in the A L wild card race late Wednesday night. The Mariners might have been feeling that pressure. They were tied 1 to 1 with the Cardinals late and couldn’t get the winning run home despite loading the bases in the eighth and putting runners on the corners in the 10th. The two teams traded runs in the 11th but the MS couldn’t get the winning run home that inning either despite loading the bases again final in the lucky 13th. Seattle’s Leo Rivas batted first with the auto runner aboard and needed just one pitch to put the game away. Swing it away. What? Oh, what it, the Mariners won 4 to 2 to sweep Saint Louis and maintain a 1.5 game lead on that torrid. Texas team. Cleveland is 3.5 back and the Royals are four back. It was only two weeks ago that we were talking about a race breaking out in the National League East. The Mets had just swept the Phillies out of Citi Field and were sitting only four games back and with Philadelphia still reeling from the sudden loss of Zack Wheeler. It seemed that battle might go down to the wire. A mere two weeks later. It’s over. This reality was hammered home Wednesday night when the Phillies pushed their NL East lead to the max behind Max Kepler Kepler’s eighth inning homer kept his three hit five RB I night as the Phillies extended their east lead to a season best 10 games since getting swept in Queens. The Phillies have won 10 of 13 since sweeping the Phillies in Queens. The Mets have dropped nine of 13. Now the Mets find themselves in a race of a different sort. The race for the last nl wild card spot. It got tighter Wednesday. Not long after the Mets fell, the Reds rose to the occasion at Petco Park trailing the Padres one to nothing in the eighth, Ellie de La Cruz singled home the tying run and Then trade acquisition miguel and Uar put Cincinnati on top. The Reds won 2 to 1 to pull within just two games of the Mets. But wait, there’s more a few clubs that were sellers of the trade deadline. The Giants Diamondbacks and Cardinals are all still hanging around in that race too. On Wednesday, the D backs finally cooled a Giants club that had won 13 of its previous 16 games with Geraldo Perdomo hitting the first leadoff home run of his career and later adding an RB I single to back a strong outing from Eduardo Rodriguez in a 5 to 3 win. The net effect is that the Giants missed an opportunity to gain another game on the Mets who they trailed by two games, but the D backs who are presumed to be done at the deadline pulled within 3.5 of New York. Meanwhile, that Mariners win over the Cardinals has Saint Louis 4.5 back as for the NL West Rays with Resurgent Mookie Betts driving in multiple runs for the fifth straight game and hitting a grand slam. The Dodgers pounded the Rockies nine to nothing. So their lead on the Padres is back to three games coming up. An Astros team that’s been heading south got a big win up North. That’s after the break, even as the Mariners have been embroiled in that aforementioned race for the final, a wild card spot. They still have a chance to win the A L West. Thanks to a prolonged funk endured by the Houston Astros entering Wednesday. The Stros had dropped seven of 10 scoring a total of 14 runs in those seven losses. Their division lead on the MS was down to a single game. They had to put starter luis Garcia on the IL on Wednesday after he left Tuesday’s outing with elbow discomfort. Just two starts into his long awaited return from Tommy John surgery. Meanwhile, the bullpen has really labored since closer josh Hader hit the Il in early August. So the Astros were in dire need of a w in Toronto on Wednesday night, they had a two nothing lead after Carlos Correa smacked a solo homer in the sixth before the bullpen blew that lead in the eighth but the Blue Jays have had bullpen issues of their own. And in the ninth when Astros catcher Janer Diaz faced Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman, he quieted the Rogers center. That ball is drilled high and deep to left field. Jaida Diaz gives the Astros a 32 lead in the night jr ball to finish things off. The Diaz go ahead sent the Astros to a much needed 3 to 2 win as they maintain that one game lead on the Mariners. Elsewhere in MLB. If the Tigers had a dating profile, it would say they like romantic movies, long walks on the beach and beating the Yankees by 10 runs. They did it Tuesday night in a 12 to 2 beat down that included a nine run seventh inning and they did it Wednesday night in an 11 to 1 win in which Gleyber Torres taunted his former team with three RBIs. Meanwhile, the Red Sox lost West Sacramento as the A’s avoided a sweep thanks to Nick Kurtz and Shay Langoliers, both reaching the 30 homer mark. So although the Blue Jays lost Wednesday, their A L East lead on both the Yankees and Red Sox remains three games. The Cubs pulled within 5.5 games of the Brewers in the NL Central with a 3 to 2 victory over the Braves to complete a series win. Paul Skeens continues to put the final stamps on his NL Cy Young bid Keynes pitched five scoreless innings and fanned eight batters to exceed the 200 strikeout plateau. His 203 K’s lead the national league. But as has been a recurring theme, Skeens whose, er, A is now sparkling 1.92 didn’t get much run support. He left with a 10 lead but wound up with a no decision in the Pirates 2 to 1 loss in innings. The Cubs announced that three time all star Anthony rizzo will officially retire as a member of the team on Saturday and join the Cubs as an ambassador. The 36 year old rizzo spent 10 of his 14 major league seasons with Chicago helping them to defeat the Indians and the curse of the Billy Goat in the 2016 World Series head to mlb.com for the rest of Wednesday’s news and scores. That’s all for today’s show. Coming up today at one pm Eastern time, MLB Network will salute the role baseball played in the healing after 911 by re airing its special titled Remembering The Game for New York. A discussion of the September 11th, 2001 game between the Mets and Braves at shea Stadium that served the first M LB game following the terrorist attacks. The network will also carry some afternoon baseball at 3 p.m. when the Astros and Blue Jays wrap up their series at the Rogers Center. Until Then. Thanks for listening. Please be sure to leave us a rating and review. Share this episode with the baseball lovers in your life and have a great day, everyone.

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