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Take a look around the league with Big League Stew's daily wrap up. We'll hit on all of the biggest moments from the day that you may have missed, while providing highlights, photos and interesting stats.
There's really good timing. And then there's impeccable timing. The timing of Christian Bethancourt's first career home run was the latter if you ask the Atlanta Braves, as it helped them earn a 5-4 walkoff victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates.
The home run capped a really big night for Atlanta's rookie catcher. Bethancourt had three hits total, including an earlier RBI single in the fourth which gave Atlanta a 3-2 lead. He also singled and scored in the seventh, meaning he was connected to Atlanta's final three runs.
For Pittsburgh, Andrew McCutchen stayed hot by hitting his eighth home run. Gregory Polanco tied the game with a clutch two-out, two-run single in the eighth, but that only served to set up Bethancourt's heroics while also robbing Julio Teheran of a victory.
With the win, Atlanta snapped a three-game losing streak in which they were outscored 26-22.
[Check out Big League Stew on Tumblr for even more baseball awesomeness.]
PUIG RETURNS, KERSHAW DOMINATES IN DODGERS WIN
After dropping the first two of their four-game weekend series with the St. Louis Cardinals, the Los Angeles Dodgers had all hands on deck Saturday night with the return of outfielder Yasiel Puig and ace Clayton Kershaw on the hill.
Not surprisingly, both men were right in the middle of the Dodgers 2-0 victory.
After a couple ugly at-bats early, Puig shook off the rust in the seventh inning to knock in the game's first run. Chris Heisey actually led off the inning with double, becoming the first runner on either team to reach second base, and Puig cashed him in quickly. One batter later, Puig would prove his hamstring was healthy, scoring from second on Justin Turner's infield single.
As for Kershaw, he was simply untouchable. He allowed one hit — Randal Grichuk's second inning single — walked two and hit one batter over eight innings. He struck out 11, joining Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, and Corey Kluber as the only pitchers with four double-digit strikeout games this season.
If we were to divide all MLB pitchers into tiers, those four would be in the first one. Comfortably.*
PADRES RALLY FROM SIX-RUN DEFICIT, TOP REDS
The San Diego Padres offense is finally looking like the juggernaut general manager A.J. Preller had hoped he'd built during the offseason. They entered play on Saturday having scored 20 runs during a three-game winning streak, and they kept rhe offense rolling despite falling behind the Cincinnati Reds by five runs in the fourth inning.
San Diego chipped away in the fifth, scoring a pair of runs on Matt Kemp's double. After Cincinnati got one back, Yonder Alonso delivered the equalizer, cracking a seventh-inning grand slam off Tony Cingrani. With the game tied one inning later, it was Matt Kemp's turn again. Kemp, who'd homered earlier as well, provided the difference in San Diego's 9-7 win with a two-run single to give him five RBIs overall.
[On this week's StewPod: Who belongs in the baseball video-game Hall of Fame?]
In fact, it was Kemp and Alonso who knocked in all nine of San Diego's run, which helped get struggling starter Andrew Cashner off the hook.
Todd Frazier had three hits and three RBIs for Cincinnati. If he's not representing the home team in next month's All-Star game, there will be much anger at Great American Ball Park.
ASTROS HITTING A SKID
Don't look now, but the Houston Astros are in the middle of an actual losing streak. After falling to the Toronto Blue Jays 7-2 at Rogers Centre on Saturday, the Astros have now lost three straight, including the first two in this weekend's series.
Time to panic? Of course not, but we've been waiting to see how they'll handle some adversity, and this might be the most notable occurrence since very early in the season.
Brett Olbertholtzer took the loss on Saturday, allowing four runs (two earned) over 3 2/3 innings. He walked three and allowed six hits, so it could have been worse. Houston's offense did little against Blue Jays starter Drew Hutchison, tallying one run on six hits over 6 1/3 innings. They'll look to snap the streak on Sunday with Collin McHugh on the hill.
On the other side, an aggressive Blue Jays squad swiped five bases, including three by Jose Reyes. Reyes has been slowed by a rib injury recently, but looked healthy and full of energy in this one. The Jays are getting healthy in the win column too, having won four straight.
Want to see more from Saturday's slate of games? Check out our scoreboard.
More MLB coverage from Yahoo Sports:
There's really good timing. And then there's impeccable timing. The timing of Christian Bethancourt's first career home run was the latter if you ask the Atlanta Braves, as it helped them earn a 5-4 walkoff victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates.
The home run capped a really big night for Atlanta's rookie catcher. Bethancourt had three hits total, including an earlier RBI single in the fourth which gave Atlanta a 3-2 lead. He also singled and scored in the seventh, meaning he was connected to Atlanta's final three runs.
For Pittsburgh, Andrew McCutchen stayed hot by hitting his eighth home run. Gregory Polanco tied the game with a clutch two-out, two-run single in the eighth, but that only served to set up Bethancourt's heroics while also robbing Julio Teheran of a victory.
With the win, Atlanta snapped a three-game losing streak in which they were outscored 26-22.
[Check out Big League Stew on Tumblr for even more baseball awesomeness.]
PUIG RETURNS, KERSHAW DOMINATES IN DODGERS WIN
After dropping the first two of their four-game weekend series with the St. Louis Cardinals, the Los Angeles Dodgers had all hands on deck Saturday night with the return of outfielder Yasiel Puig and ace Clayton Kershaw on the hill.
Not surprisingly, both men were right in the middle of the Dodgers 2-0 victory.
After a couple ugly at-bats early, Puig shook off the rust in the seventh inning to knock in the game's first run. Chris Heisey actually led off the inning with double, becoming the first runner on either team to reach second base, and Puig cashed him in quickly. One batter later, Puig would prove his hamstring was healthy, scoring from second on Justin Turner's infield single.
As for Kershaw, he was simply untouchable. He allowed one hit — Randal Grichuk's second inning single — walked two and hit one batter over eight innings. He struck out 11, joining Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, and Corey Kluber as the only pitchers with four double-digit strikeout games this season.
If we were to divide all MLB pitchers into tiers, those four would be in the first one. Comfortably.*
PADRES RALLY FROM SIX-RUN DEFICIT, TOP REDS
The San Diego Padres offense is finally looking like the juggernaut general manager A.J. Preller had hoped he'd built during the offseason. They entered play on Saturday having scored 20 runs during a three-game winning streak, and they kept rhe offense rolling despite falling behind the Cincinnati Reds by five runs in the fourth inning.
San Diego chipped away in the fifth, scoring a pair of runs on Matt Kemp's double. After Cincinnati got one back, Yonder Alonso delivered the equalizer, cracking a seventh-inning grand slam off Tony Cingrani. With the game tied one inning later, it was Matt Kemp's turn again. Kemp, who'd homered earlier as well, provided the difference in San Diego's 9-7 win with a two-run single to give him five RBIs overall.
[On this week's StewPod: Who belongs in the baseball video-game Hall of Fame?]
In fact, it was Kemp and Alonso who knocked in all nine of San Diego's run, which helped get struggling starter Andrew Cashner off the hook.
Todd Frazier had three hits and three RBIs for Cincinnati. If he's not representing the home team in next month's All-Star game, there will be much anger at Great American Ball Park.
ASTROS HITTING A SKID
Don't look now, but the Houston Astros are in the middle of an actual losing streak. After falling to the Toronto Blue Jays 7-2 at Rogers Centre on Saturday, the Astros have now lost three straight, including the first two in this weekend's series.
Time to panic? Of course not, but we've been waiting to see how they'll handle some adversity, and this might be the most notable occurrence since very early in the season.
Brett Olbertholtzer took the loss on Saturday, allowing four runs (two earned) over 3 2/3 innings. He walked three and allowed six hits, so it could have been worse. Houston's offense did little against Blue Jays starter Drew Hutchison, tallying one run on six hits over 6 1/3 innings. They'll look to snap the streak on Sunday with Collin McHugh on the hill.
On the other side, an aggressive Blue Jays squad swiped five bases, including three by Jose Reyes. Reyes has been slowed by a rib injury recently, but looked healthy and full of energy in this one. The Jays are getting healthy in the win column too, having won four straight.
Want to see more from Saturday's slate of games? Check out our scoreboard.
More MLB coverage from Yahoo Sports:
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Mark Townsend is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Townie813