Nick Gonzales out of lineup against Cardinals

The 36-year-old right-hander has been working out of the bullpen since returning from the injured list on September 12. He hasn’t thrown more than 46 pitches in any of those four outings out of the bullpen, which makes it unlikely that he works deep enough into Saturday’s game to earn a victory.

Jung sustained the injury during Friday’s game when he was drilled on the hand by a 95-mph fastball from Joe Ryan. It’s a brutal blow for the Rangers and for the oft-injured slugger who will be heading back to the injured list on Saturday. No word yet on how long he’s expected to be sidelined for, but it’ll almost certainly cost him the remainder of the season.

It is better late than never for Crews to fill the stat sheet. He was in the middle of Nationals’ rallies in both the first and third innings and gave them a valuable insurance run in the seventh with a solo home run. He’s quietly closed his season with a .261/.312/.426 slash line and five stolen bases over his last 30 games. That will put him back in consideration for sleeper lists ahead of 2027 drafts.

Back after missing nearly three full seasons, Gray earned the first save of his career here in this win over the Mets. His stuff was crisp as he forced four whiffs in just one inning of work and funny enough, he only threw one fastball out of 18 total pitches with the rest being various breaking balls. Above all else, it’s great to see Gray back on the mound.

In the type of choppy, sloppy game you’d expect from two teams battling for fourth place in late September, Alvarez’s misshapen final line matched the mood. To look at the positives, he missed plenty of bats. His 14 swings-and-misses were just one off his season-high and he forced at least two with all five of his pitches. However, the reason his repertoire widened out a bit more than usual was because his trusted curveball was less effective than usual. The Mets weren’t often fooled by it and when Alvarez tried to spot it in the zone, he struggled to do so. Also, his outing ended with back-to-back home runs by Bo Bichette and Carson Benge. The wind was blowing in heavily at Nationals Park too. If not, Alvarez could have let up more long balls. Yet, his transition to the rotation has been a resounding success through the second half as his season concluded with a 3.35 ERA, 86 strikeouts, and 41 walks in 86 innings as a starting pitcher.

Don’t tell Benge there’s only two games left this year because he’s still in midseason form. Two more hits here raised his batting average to a cool .277 and his homer was his 20th. Already with 22 stolen bases, he became the first Met in team history to go 20-20 as a rookie. Getting better as he goes along, a .297/.364/.461 slash line in the second half catapulted him into the National League Rookie of the Year race.

The beginning of this game was pure chaos for the Mets. Set up to be a bullpen game, Jefry Yan let up five base runners and two runners over 1 2/3 innings before Jonathan Pintaro imploded for three more runs and two wild pitches while only recording one out. A bit later, Hagenman finally came in as the bulk guy and calmed everything down with four easy innings. There was plenty of hard contact along the way though as Hagenman’s fastball, cutter, changeup mix doesn’t miss many bats.

Burleson pinch-hit for José Fermín in the top of the seventh inning and blasted a two-run homer off Brewers reliever Bryse Wilson to tie the game at 4-4. It was the 25th homer of the season for Burleson, who also pushed his RBI total to 115 on the season with two games left to go. He now holds a two-RBI lead over Pete Alonso for the MLB lead.

Ortiz seemed to role his ankle while running the bases in the second inning. His limp then seemed to get progressively worse throughout the game before he was ultimately lifted late. It sounds like a day-to-day type of situation, but look for the Brewers to provide more clarity on Ortiz’s availability prior to Saturday’s ballgame.

Turang got the scoring started for the Brewers in the bottom of the first inning when he doubled to drive in Garrett Mitchell to put his team up 1-0. Turang’s two-RBI single in the bottom of the eight inning kick-started a four-run inning for the Brewers, which proved to be enough to secure the 101st win of the season for the Brewers. Turang is slashing .368/.484/.592 in September with 11 extra-base hits and 19 RBI and appears primed for the postseason.