Last Night In Baseball: Chris Sale's CG Shutout Leads Braves To Sweep Of Dodgers

Chris Sale was as good as ever. The Blue Jays couldn't get it together. Jackson Chourio went off. Thursday's MLB action provided all that and much more. Here are all the best moments from last night in Major League Baseball: What a thriller. Two of the game's best pitchers, representing two of the game's best teams, faced off on Thursday night when Chris Sale and the Braves took on Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the Dodgers in Los Angeles. And this one delivered on its promise. In the bottom of the first inning, leadoff hitter and catcher Drake Baldwin homered on the first pitch of the game, an 89 mph splitter that didn't split nearly far enough from the middle of the strike zone. That would be the only run in the entire game. Yamamoto was masterful beyond that one pitch, going 6 innings with just three other hits allowed and eight strikeouts against one walk. The problem for the Dodgers was that, on the other side, Chris Sale was just better. Much better. Sale was throwing some of the best ball of his career, actually. He racked up 11 strikeouts and scattered five hits without walking any batters. And he did it all over nine innings, too. The sweep, by way of a complete-game shutout from Atlanta's 37-year-old ace. His first complete-game shutout since 2019, when he was in his age-30 season and with the Red Sox, roughly 750 strikeouts ago. Sale has a 2.06 ERA in 2026 across 24 starts and 144 innings: if it holds, it will be the lowest ERA of his career, which is saying something when, across 2,228 innings, 336 starts and dozens of relief appearances, Sale's cumulative ERA is 2.95. A Hall of Fame performance from a guy likely to be enshrined there someday, basically. Who knows how much more Sale has in the tank in the long term, or what long-term even looks like for him, but right now, he's as good as he's ever been, just when the Braves need him to be. [record scratch] you're probably wondering how the Blue Jays got here. Well, it all started with Carter Jensen hitting a leadoff home run on the second pitch of the game... ...and escalated from there. Two runs in the first and second innings each, then six more in the sixth, when the Royals walked, doubled, walked, doubled - not a repeating typo, that was the sequence - singled and homered to make it a 10-0 game - that's when the boos started. Toronto would finally push two runs across in the bottom of the inning, but it was too few too late: the Royals erased those and then some with another three before this one ran out of innings, and the Blue Jays would lose, 13-2. Truly a wasted opportunity for Toronto, with the Orioles losing and neither of the Rangers nor Guardians playing - the Jays had a chance to pick up half-a-game on the latter two and one on the O's, leapfrogging them in the wild-card race, but instead sit 3.5 behind Cleveland on Friday morning, five games under .500 with just over a month of season to go. The St. Louis Cardinals lost the first two games of the series against the Baltimore Orioles, but on Thursday the Cards were able to seal the deal in a way they failed to on Wednesday and come away with the W. St. Louis was up 5-0 after four, powered primarily by a three-run shot off the bat of third baseman Blaze Jordan, his third dinger of the year. Both teams would pick up a run in the fifth, and then Baltimore would score three in the seventh to make things interesting, all thanks to Coby Mayo's 18th homer of the year, a majestic 446-foot blast to center that came off the bat at over 111 mph. It just wasn't enough, however: relievers George Soriano and Riley O'Brien (mostly) held it down the rest of the way, with the latter picking up his 34th save of the year with a scoreless ninth that featured a harmless single. The Orioles, like the Blue Jays, wasted a chance to both narrow the gap and create separation in the AL wild-card race, but the Cardinals got a much-needed dub. St. Louis is 5.5 back, trailing the Marlins, Diamondbacks and the current third wild-card holder, the Padres, in the NL race - the Cards have the tougher road, despite the O's closest competition being sub-.500 teams. Gerrit Cole, former Astros ace, took the mound against Houston on Thursday with his current team where he's also an ace, the Yankees. He had a pretty solid performance, allowing three runs over six innings while striking out five against one walk, but it just wasn't enough - not with New York managing a single run. The inevitable game-winner came in the sixth, when first baseman Christian Walker hit his 24th homer of the year, a two-run shot, to put Houston up 3-1. The Yankees responded in the bottom of the inning with a sac fly by left fielder Cody Bellinger, but that's all the offense New York could muster. Starter Hayden Wesneski allowed five baserunners and that one run, then the bullpen allowed just two more baserunners over the remaining four innings while whiffing five Yanks. The dub put Houston back at .500 for the season and a full game up on the Texas Rangers in the AL West. It's not much, no, but it's also not a losing record, which is something the West leaders keep inexplicably possessing seemingly every other game this month. Pretty good series for the Brewers, all things considered. Sure, Milwaukee lost the opener to the Mets thanks to a walk off, but the Brew Crew then won the next two games in the series while their closest competition for the top seed in the National League, the Dodgers, were swept by the Braves. Milwaukee now has a three-game lead over Los Angeles for that top spot, and any little postseason edge might end up mattering. The Brewers took down the Mets, 8-2, in the series finale, and did so in large part thanks to the efforts of Jackson Chourio. Milwaukee's left fielder went 4-for-5 with four runs, four RBIs and two homers, basically besting the Mets on his own. Except he didn't do it alone, considering he drove in more runs than that and was driven in more times than just the homers managed, but also because Milwaukee's ace, Jacob Misiorowski, was on the mound. He went six innings and allowed a pair of runs, striking out six against four baserunners - the ridiculous thing is that, Miz has beenso good in 2026 that giving up two runs over six actually brought his ERAup to 1.73. Milwaukee now has a seven-game lead over the Cubs in the NL Central: for as good as Chicago has been, the Brewers have been better for longer. Milwaukee has the best run differential in the majors at +173, and it's quite a drop to the next-best one. That is, like with wins, Los Angeles, at +148. Sure, the AL West might be a weird mess of losing teams, but the NL side of things is shaping up to be a fierce competition for seeding and in the postseason itself.