Orioles are calling up OF Christian Franklin

Bell’s homer came in the eighth inning, and it still left the Twins trailing 5-2. The 33-year-old has homered 14 times and driven in 64 runs over 109 games with the Twins in his first — potentially last — season in Minnesota.

Welcome back. It was the first game back for Witt after he missed a little less than two weeks with his back tightness, and he didn’t look rusty at all. The 26-year-old doubled and singled twice, and in addition to the two runs driven in, he scored a pair himself. Witt’s season has been a slight disappointment, but that’s only based on expectations. Most shortstops would do unethical things to hit .283/.353/.455.

As we all predicted, Randy Dobnak now has an ERA of 1.16 on the season. He has allowed no more than a run in five of his six starts, and he has yet to give up more than two in his seven outings since joining the Kansas City rotation. It’s almost entirely smoke and mirrors with Dobnak striking out just one batter against three walks in this outing, but hey, it’s worked. A chance to continue to quiet the doubters comes Sunday against the Cubs.

It’s another poor start for Ryan, who has really struggled since the All-Star break. The right-hander had a 2.85 before his deserved selection to that contest, and this poor outing sees that mark jump up to 3.65 on the season. He allowed seven hits, issued a pair of walks and struck out three in this lackluster — at best — effort. He’ll try and right the ship next weekend, but the Brewers present another challenge for Ryan.

He also drew a walk. The homer was the sixth of the season for Rodriguez and came off Logan Henderson in the fifth inning to bring the Bucs within a run. The 26-year-old has dealt with injuries — an unfortunately common theme in the early portion of his career — but the .266/.377/.435 slash is nice to see from a player that isn’t long removed from being considered one of the best prospects at his position.

Vaughn smoked a homer to center in the fourth to give the Brew Crew a 2-1 lead in the fourth. It’s just the fifth homer of the season for the 28-year-old, but that number is a little more understandable considering he’s only played in 69 games in 2026. Despite the lack of power production, Vaughn has been effective when healthy as seen in his .874 OPS over his 187 plate appearances.

Chourio tied the game 1-1 with a solo homer off Jared Jones. He got Jones again later with an RBI single up the middle to extend the Brewers’ cushion to 3-1 on the season. It’s the first homer of August for Chourio, and just the second since the start of July for the uber-talented 22-year-old. It would be more surprising than not if the balls don’t start traveling over the fence for Chourio over the final two months.

Megill was efficient again, and while that comes with no strikeouts, he didn’t allow a hit or walk while lowering his ERA to 2.76 and picking p his 19th save. There’s the occasional clunker here and there for Megill, but in general, the job gets done.

Henderson gave up a pair of home runs, but both came with no one on to make them more digestible. Outside of the roundtrippers the 24-year-old was outstanding with eight strikeouts against one walk while throwing 55-of-83 pitches for strikes. He’s now 6-1 on the season with an excellent 2.70 ERA on the season, and a chance to make both numbers better is scheduled to come next week against the Padres in San Diego.

This could have been worse, as Jones gave up eight hits in the outing, and two of those hits were homers. Fortunately both roundtrippers were solo shots, and he did a decent job of wiggling out of jams with four strikeouts. That’s not to say this was an effective outing, but it could’ve been a disaster. He’ll take a 4.02 ERA into a scheduled start against the Mets on Sunday.