Sunday was a milestone day in Major League Baseball. If you head over to the front page of MLB.com, you’re going to see a lot of headlines about milestones. Younger players like Rafael Devers and Pete Alonso reached milestones as did veterans Zack Greinke and Mike Trout . Devers had a four-RBI game that put him over 100 on the year, and he’s the first Boston player to crack the 100-RBI mark before the age of 23 since Ted Williams. Alonso hit his 40th home run of the season, which is now a record for an NL rookie. It’s only August 19, by the way. Greinke recorded his 200th win, making him one of three active players with 200-plus wins along with CC Sabathia and teammate Justin Verlander . Trout continues to defy all logic as he has now tied Derek Jeter in career WAR. He just turned 28, by the way.

Pitching Performance of the Day

In the two starts prior to his start on Sunday, Matthew Boyd unquestionably had the two worst starts of his season. He allowed a combined 11 earned runs and 18 baserunners in only eight innings of work. His game scores per Fangraphs were eight and 15, and his previous low this season was 33. All that said to say that Boyd being the arguably the best starting pitcher on Sunday wasn’t expected. He allowed only one run and four baserunners in seven innings while striking out nine with a day-leading 18 swinging strikes generated. Here’s one particularly nasty slider he threw to get one of his swinging strikes.

 

 

Hitting Performance of the Day

Mike Moustakas led all hitters on Sunday in both wOBA and total bases. Moose went 3-for-4 with two home runs, a double and a walk along with five RBI. His wRC+ jumped from 111 to 116 in only one day. He has wRC+ marks of 123, 114 and 105 in his last three full seasons, so this year represents a bit of a bounce back for him so far. He now has 30 homers, which clears the 28 he hit last season, and he’s on his way to matching or exceeding his career high of 38 home runs. The Brewers will surely exercise their portion of a mutual option for 2020, but Moose will presumably feel like he can do better than one year and $10M on the market.

Game of the Day

Moustakas wasn’t the only player to hit two home runs in the Brewers-Nationals game. In fact, two Nationals did it as Brian Dozier and Juan Soto contributed half of the eight home runs hit by the Nationals yesterday. The eight home runs tied a club record set in 2017 when they also hit eight against Milwaukee.

 

 

 

 

What to Watch for Today

Monday is a short slate with only nine games on tap. By far the most important game as far as playoff eligibility goes is Milwaukee at St. Louis. The Cardinals are tied with the Cubs for the NL Central lead with the Brewers sitting just two games back. The pitching matchup is Zach Davies against Dakota Hudson . The Cubs are off on Monday but open a series with the Giants on Tuesday. The most notable pitchers going on Monday include John Means , Trevor Bauer , Marco Gonzales and Wade Miley .