The Buzz — Monday, August 31

Pete Crow-Armstrong

The take PCA multi-homer binge fuels loud NL MVP buzz

He went five deep in two days at Wrigley — three homers and six RBI on Saturday, two more on Sunday, giving him 14 for August and 38 on the season. The crowd at Wrigley was chanting M-V-P after the blasts, and the number says they are right to: 9.1 fWAR, first in baseball, on a player with 32 steals and a real run at 40-40. The Ohtani crowd has the louder national case, but Crow-Armstrong has the WAR lead, the center-field defense, and now the counting-stat surge that gives voters a concrete alternative on the ballot. This is a full-season resume catching a late spark at the exact moment people start paying attention.

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Max Scherzer

The take Scherzer vintage 7-IP 1-hitter 10-K gem passes Perry

Seven innings, one hit, ten strikeouts, and the 3,535th strikeout of his career — the one that moved him past Gaylord Perry into ninth all-time. At 42 years and 34 days old, he is the oldest to go 10-and-1-or-fewer since Nolan Ryan in 1991. It was his first win since March 31, improving him to 2-7 on the year. The vintage line is real and the milestone is earned, but one start does not reverse an otherwise rough 2026. What it does is prove the arm still carries a peak — and Toronto needed exactly that to hold its ground in the wild-card race.

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Austin Wells

The take Wells two HRs in 9-run 8th power Yankees rout

Two home runs in a single inning is franchise history — the seventh time a Yankee has done it, the first since Gleyber Torres on September 21, 2022. That part of the noise is earned. The first shot, leading off the eighth off Jovani Moran, turned a comfortable lead into a rout. The second was a three-run blast off Andruw Monasterio, an infielder throwing a 49.8 mph slider in a game already decided at 16-1.

The highlight is real, and so is the padding. A homer off a position player counts in the record book the same as one off a late-inning arm — the history is not conditional — but the crowd calling it a breakout needs to set it next to the season line. Wells is hitting .184 with 10 home runs and 26 RBI in 282 at-bats. A two-homer inning in a 16-1 rout is a night that gets clipped and passed around because the franchise marker is genuine. It is not a night that turns a .184 season around.

Where the inning actually mattered was the standings. The win pushed the Yankees to 78-59, four games ahead of the Red Sox at 74-63, and clinched the head-to-head tiebreaker at 7-6. That is the number that outlasts the highlight — a four-game gap with the season series settled.

Austin Wells cards on eBay →(paid link)

Gunnar Henderson

The take Henderson 4-for-4 two HRs five RBI in Orioles rally

The Orioles were down 5-1 before seven unanswered runs swept the Athletics, and Henderson was the bat that pulled them back — 4-for-4, two home runs, a triple, five RBI. The crowd saw the player they expected all year. The problem is the season line he carried into it: a career-low .690 OPS. That is a real down year by his own standards, not a slump hiding a star.

But the read does not stop there. His expected wOBA in August was .387, 10th among qualifiers, and the contact quality had been climbing before Sunday put a number on it. The August OPS up to .838, plus the defensive plays that stranded the bases loaded. The crowd is right to flag this as the night it turned — and the underlying data was already arguing the same case before the box score caught up.

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Elly De La Cruz

The take De La Cruz day-to-day after left quad tightness exit

The Reds pulled De La Cruz before the seventh on Sunday with left quadriceps tightness — the same area that hampered him through much of 2025, when he played all 162 games but carried elevated errors and home-run droughts. Terry Francona said he does not think it is very bad and there is a chance he plays Monday, but the evaluation is Monday morning in Cincinnati. The club is optimistic he avoids a second IL stint. The history says to wait for the scan before trusting the optimism.

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