The Buzz · September 4, 2026
The Buzz — Friday, September 4
Two days of baseball gave the timeline a homecoming, a history-making power-speed milestone, and a rookie catcher who nearly hit for the cycle. Five names, and under each the number that settles whether the noise is earned.
Adley Rutschman
The take Two HRs after ovation in emotional Orioles return
The ovation lasted close to a minute, the Orioles played a video tribute, and the Camden Yards crowd that used to cheer for him cheered for him one more time. Then he stepped in against Orioles starter Brandon Young and hit a solo home run to right in the first inning, and another off Young in the sixth — both to right, both solo shots, his 10th of the season and second since the trade.
He is the second player since at least 1900 to change teams and homer multiple times in his first game against his former club in the same season. The history is real. So is the context: he was returning from a hyperextended right elbow that cost him three games, and his 10th homer of the season was only his second since the trade. The return was storybook; the adjustment is a work in progress. Two balls to right off the team that traded him is a start nobody scripted.
Adley Rutschman cards on eBay →(paid link)
Pete Crow-Armstrong
The take PCA's 39th HR nears 40, MLB lead, MVP buzz
The 39th home run moved Crow-Armstrong one behind Kyle Schwarber for the major-league lead, and one shy of joining Billy Williams as the only left-handed hitters in Cubs history to reach 40 in a season. August's 14 home runs earned him NL Player of the Month. The full line — .280 with 39 home runs and 32 steals in 141 games — is an MVP case that does not need defending. The only question left is whether 40 arrives before the standings let him chase it.
Pete Crow-Armstrong cards on eBay →(paid link)
Ronald Acuña Jr.
The take Acuña just became fastest ever to 200 HR and 200 SB
904 career games. That is how long it took Ronald Acuña Jr. to reach 200 home runs and 200 stolen bases — 25 fewer than Alfonso Soriano needed, and faster than anyone in the history of the sport. The record is complete, not a projection: his 200th steal came in June of 2025, and his 200th homer arrived in the seventh inning of a 9-0 Braves win over Washington on September 2.
What the milestone papers over is the season that surrounds it. Acuña's 2026 line sits at .243 with a .761 OPS across 329 at-bats, a year interrupted by multiple IL stints for hamstring issues. He is 14 home runs deep and the calendar says September. The record says what he is when whole; the stat line says what the injuries have cost him. Both are true at once.
Ronald Acuña Jr. cards on eBay →(paid link)
Teoscar Hernández
The take Hernandez walk-off double lifts Dodgers over Cardinals
The Dodgers were hitless in 16 straight at-bats with runners in scoring position when Hernández sent a 3-2 pitch into the left-center gap for a two-run walk-off double. It was the only RISP hit they managed all night — their eighth walk-off of the year. Hernández had been hitting .210 with a .592 OPS in 47 games since returning from a left hamstring strain, and the club had been discussing a platoon. One swing does not erase that. But it avoided a sweep and bought him another week of at-bats.
Teoscar Hernández cards on eBay →(paid link)
Carter Jensen
The take Young Royals catcher's multi-HR then near-cycle hot streak
Two nights, three home runs, a franchise record, and a single shy of the cycle. Jensen hit his 20th and 21st home runs on September 2 — the first a leadoff shot that set the Royals' single-season franchise mark with six — then came back September 3 and went 3-for-4 with a 440-foot homer, a triple, and a double, one hit short of the cycle in a 7-3 win over Miami.
The numbers that say this is not a streak but a season: 22 home runs, matching Bo Jackson and Carlos Beltran for the second-most by a Royals rookie, behind Bob Hamelin's 24. Jensen is a 23-year-old catcher batting leadoff — two jobs that almost never belong to the same person — and he has held both for a club with nothing left to play for except the chance to prove he is the answer.
The season line through the multi-homer night was .226 with a .426 slugging percentage — real power, a modest average. But Jensen and teammate Jac Caglianone — 23-year-old lefty sluggers, 22 and 23 home runs — are the middle of an order the Royals are building around, and the next two months are where it has to hold.
Carter Jensen cards on eBay →(paid link)
Where it actually moved
Four of these five plays will be remembered for the individual, not the result — Rutschman's return, Acuña's record, Crow-Armstrong's chase for 40, Jensen's arrival. The swing that shifted a race was Hernández's walk-off, which kept the Dodgers at 83-57 and dropped the Cardinals to 70-71, turning a potential sweep into a preserved lead. The timeline circles back to the milestones. The standings moved in Chavez Ravine.