Emerson Hancock strikes out six in loss to Tigers

Cameron was simply masterful here. He mixed his changeup, slider, fastball, cutter, and curveball nearly evenly and all five of those pitches forced multiple swings-and-misses. His slider was especially lethal with seven whiffs of its own as he located beautifully running inside on right-handed batters. With that pitch and his cutter brushing righties back, changeups falling away from them on the outside, curveballs attacking their back foot, and elevated fastballs forcing them to respect the heat you could see how beautifully Cameron’s different pitches play off each other when everything’s clicking. And things are clicking lately as Cameron has allowed just one run over his last three starts spanning 23 innings with 24 strikeouts and six walks. He has a tall task up next though heading to Los Angeles to face the Dodgers before taking on the Angels in the second leg of a two-start week.

There were some long at-bats, but Cruz managed to work a clean ninth inning for his third save of the season. All three of those saves have come in the last two weeks and he seems to have unseated Alex Lange for closing duties in Kansas City. Cruz seems up for the task with a 100 mph fastball and cutter that has some serious bite to it.

Massey delivered the big blow in this game with a solo home run in the seventh inning off newly acquired Twins reliever A.J. Minter to break a 1-1 tie. That was enough to push the Royals to a victory and put starter Noah Cameron in position for a well deserved win. The left-handed Massey doesn’t get many chances against left-handed pitchers, but made the most of this one with his ninth home run of the season.

The Twins could only muster two hits in this game as Royals’ starter Noah Cameron tossed an eight inning gem and Jeffers accounted for exactly half of them. He also had the two hardest hit balls Cameron allowed and seemed to be the only guy who consistently got good swings off against him. Since coming off the injured list, he has a .259 batting average and three home runs in 16 games as he tries to regain his first half form.

Kremer was solid in his Twins debut. He drastically pushed up the usage of his four-seam fastball and kept it elevated consistently. That usage especially spiked against left-handed batters where he threw it 54% of the time against them here compared to 27% while he was with the Orioles. That came while he almost completely trashed his curveball and sinker against them. We like that decision for the sinker and also spiked a few curveballs early and floated one in late, so this could have been more about feel than a conscious adjustment. Still, he was effective and is scheduled for a two-start week against the Orioles and Phillies coming up with both starts at home.

Kevin Ginkel lost the shutout bid in the ninth, but this was still a rout. It’s Bratt’s first major league victory. He was 0-1 with a 5.23 ERA and a 12/15 K/BB in five starts before this gem. We wouldn’t trust him based on this outing alone, but he does have an awfully favorable matchup Monday against the Rockies. The risk there in weekly leagues is that he’ll also probably face the Braves in Atlanta next Sunday.

Well, the good news is that Mize’s velocity decline in his final start as a Tiger didn’t carry over. Pitching on 10 days’ rest, he was right back at his season average of 93.5 mph with his fastball tonight. However, after two scoreless frames, Mize surrendered two runs in the third and six in the fourth. The eight runs and nine hits allowed were both season highs. Three walks also matched his season high; he hadn’t done that since Apr. 22. We imagine he’ll bounce back next week against the Brewers, but this was not the first impression he was looking for.

The triple in the ninth would have been a homer in 26 ballparks, according to Statcast. However, it also might well have been caught had the Padres been playing Fernando Tatis Jr. in right field; Jase Bowen came up just a tad short of making the jumping catch at the wall. It’s Vargas’s fifth career four-RBI game. The first came in 2017 (actually, in his first career start), but the last three have all taken place in 2026. His 55 RBI are 24 more than his previous career high from 2022. He’s also now played in five more games and taken 51 more plate appearances than ever before.

It’s great for his fantasy value that Carroll is back running again. He has six steals in his last 15 games after collecting just four in his previous 55 games. He’s 16-for-22 on the season.

Rodríguez’s homer came in a scoreless game after Brenan Hanifee intentionally walked Dominic Canzone to face him with two outs in the sixth. It was Rodriguez’s 17th homer of the year. 10 of those came in May. This was his first of August after he hit two in each of the other three months of the season.