MLB News & Moments You Should Know: 6/20/2025

Stay updated on everything baseball with our morning MLB News & Moments articles. We’ve got you covered to keep you in the know.

I know there’s a little plug for it directly below this intro, but I wanted to really impress upon you, dear reader, how much fun watching games with a whole crew chatting on Playback really is. Jumping around the league and rating booths and performances in real time is a great time, and comiserating with your fellow fantasy players as your starter gets blown up helps cushion the blow. So with that out of the way, let’s jump into another day of baseball happenings as I fill in for Justin.

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Today’s Headlines

Dodgers Turn ICE Away At The Door

Following ongoing protests against ICE raids around LA, the Dodgers have mostly tried to avoid discussing the issue. The organization as a whole has said nothing, and Dave Roberts specifically told a reporter he didn’t have any thoughts on the matter. On Thursday morning, the matter literally came to their doorstep.

Masked Border Patrol and ICE agents are staged at Dodger Stadium. They are blocking the entrance to the parking lot where a lot of their vehicles are located

— Tina-Desiree Berg (@tinadesireeberg.com) 2025-06-19T18:05:39.178Z

ICE agents are taking up positions at the entrances to @Dodgers Stadium, media and crowd beginning to arrive pic.twitter.com/kezCNeLmpD

— Kevin Takumi (@KevinTakumi) June 19, 2025

The vehicles shown in Kevin’s video are part of a much larger convoy of vehicles spotted pulling into the parking lots. The Athletic has a summary of the timeline:

According to local media reports and first-hand accounts, a caravan of unmarked vehicles showed up outside Gate A, the main entrance to Dodger Stadium, at about 8 a.m. local time, saying that they had detainees to process. The Dodgers denied the agents access to the property, at which point they moved to Gate E, the “Downtown Gate.”

Protestors also began to show up at Gate E, at which point the Dodgers, according to the Los Angeles Times, asked local police to intervene.

Protestors continued to arrive as LAPD cordoned off the lots and eventually escorted the federal vehicles off the property:

LAPD says they will also be removing Border Patrol and DHS

— Tina-Desiree Berg (@tinadesireeberg.com) 2025-06-19T18:36:42.356Z

ICE @Dodgers escorted by @LAPD off the property. Gate is now clear. Crowd starting to disperse. pic.twitter.com/rXao91aVkM

— Kevin Takumi (@KevinTakumi) June 19, 2025

The Dodgers issued a statement shortly afterwards:

This morning, ICE agents came to Dodger Stadium and requested permission to access the parking lots. They were denied entry to the grounds by the organization. Tonight’s game will be played as scheduled.

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) June 19, 2025

In addition to the context of a now almost three-week-old cadence of constant ICE raids and police operations around Los Angeles, the Dodgers recently announced that they would be outlining a plan “to assist immigrant groups affected by recent militarized raids in the city by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” as told to Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic. Whether this played a role in the decision by DHS to use the stadium as some kind of staging area may never be known, but it did have the effect of dashing the timeline for the team announcement of the plan’s details. As team president Stan Kasten told Ardaya:

“Because of the events earlier today, we continue to work with groups that were involved with our programs,” he said. “But we are going to have to delay today’s announcement while we firm up some more details. We’ll get back to you soon with the timing.”

For their part, the federal government has issued several confusing statements about the entire thing, claiming ICE was not on the scene, and that it was simply CBP. When they were asked by local reporters, the masked, armed individuals simply stated they were from “DHS” and didn’t provide any more details. DHS claimed that “CBP vehicles were in the stadium parking lot very briefly, unrelated to any operation or enforcement,” which is just bizarre and directly contradicts information provided by the LAPD to Yahoo reporters:

A Los Angeles Police Department source, who requested anonymity in order to discuss internal matters, said federal agents had gathered near the stadium to conduct a briefing but had left by the time images of the gathering began circulating on social media.

Furthermore, local activists said that vehicles seen entering the lots were used earlier that day to arrest people at a Home Depot in Hollywood that same day:

Emily Phillips, an Echo Park Rapid Response community member, shared photos with The Times of two vehicles that were at both the Hollywood Home Depot and Dodger Stadium on Thursday, as identified by their license plates.

Phillips also said a CBP officer at Dodger Stadium told her the agents were there to process the people they had arrested.

“We bring the detainees here to process them and conduct our investigation without public interference,” the agent said, according to Phillips, who wrote down his quote. “We can’t do it in the Home Depot parking lot because the public makes it dangerous.”

The federal government hasn’t responded to any of those allegations. If it’s true that the lots around Dodger Stadium are being used as impromptu detainee processing centers, it’s quite at odds with the Dodgers’ general hands-off non-responses when asked previously, and comes directly on the heels of news that they told Nezza not to sing the national anthem in Spanish on June 15th, and would serve as a cruel continuity with the Battle of Chaez Ravine that saw an entire Mexican-American neighborhood effectively stolen and bulldozed to make way for the stadium. Needless to say, I’m very interested to see what the statement from the team ends up being at this point, and what ends up happening with a planned protest near the park scheduled for this weekend.

The Game, As Scheduled

The actual baseball in LA last night was also not without drama. The Padres were in LA looking to stave off a sweep, and rookie starter Ryan Bergert was up to the task, throwing 4.2 innings of scoreless baseball, giving up three hits and one walk along with a trio of strikeouts. He was followed by Adrian Morejon, Jeremiah Estrada, and Jason Adam, who combined to pitch 3.1 scoreless innings. The Dodgers, meanwhile, got what would normally be a pretty strong start from Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who went 6.1 innings, giving up seven hits, three runs (all earned), and no walks along with five strikeouts. He almost threw an immaculate inning in the middle of all of that, was it not for some very interpretive ball/strike calls (a theme for the night).

Joe Davis: "Here's the 0-2. It is… OH NO! MARVIN HUDSON COST HIM AN IMMACULATE INNING!" Eric Karros: "That wasn't even borderline…. That was borderline middle-middle." Joe Davis: "Can we get ABS on loan for the night from Triple-A?… That's a bummer!" ⚾️👮‍♂️🎙️ #MLB

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing.bsky.social) 2025-06-20T03:21:42.899Z

So, as the box scores will tell you (with some puzzling out as I said them, to be fair), the Padres took a 3-0 lead into the eighth inning. They added another pair of runs in that inning off of Jack Little, making his major league debut. One of the runs came on a bases-loaded walk to Jose Iglesias and the other from a Gavin Sheets RBI single. But Little also hit Fernando Tatis Jr. with a fastball up and in, which emptied the benches:

Benches clear in the 9th inning of the Padres-Dodgers game in Los Angeles. pic.twitter.com/ugfVSFmqtS

— MLB (@MLB) June 20, 2025

It was an incredible example of the prototypical baseball “brawl,” where all of the guys just kind of stand there for a while, until Teoscar Hernández successfully played peacemaker and actually sent Mike Schildt back to the visitors’ dugout with a smile on his face. Neither of these teams is particularly fond of each other, and it doesn’t seem to be just for show, so there was a lot of talk on the broadcast about whether the Padres would retaliate, and the consensus was that they would probably wait until their next series. But then in the ninth inning, things started to come apart rapidly for San Diego. Sean Reynolds came on hoping to put the game away, but was unable to protect the five-run lead, walking the first two batters he faced before getting Andy Pages on a 375-foot flyout to left field. Schildt went to his closer at that point, but Robert Suarez was not feeling it on Thursday. He immediately gave up a run-scoring single to Tommy Edman before getting Hyesong Kim to ground out, although that also scored Max Muncy, making it 5-2 Padres in the ninth with two outs. Suarez fell behind 3-0 to Shohei Ohtani, and rather than walk him, well:

Suarez hits Ohtani and gets tossed, Shohei tells the dugout to stay put

— CJ Fogler (@cjzero.bsky.social) 2025-06-20T05:13:20.629Z

As you can see in the clip, Suarez was immediately tossed from the game, which meant the Padres had to call on an unprepared Yuki Matsui, who proceeded to walk Miguel Rojas on five pitches to load the bases. With Dalton Rushing up, Matsui uncorked one of the stranger wild pitches you’ll ever see:

View post on imgur.com

Since the ball got stuck under Martín Maldonado’s chest protector, all runners get a free base, making the score 5-3 with runners on second and third. Matsui got Rushing to swing through a fastball on the next pitch to bring the game to a conclusion, but whew. The Padres successfully staved off the sweep, but still find themselves five games behind LA in the division. They next play each other in San Diego at the end of August, and I doubt tensions will be much lower then.

Wood Fired (Up)

LA’s next opponents are the Washington Nationals, who will be flying into town high off a walk-off win on Thursday as they, too, staved off a sweep at the hands of Colorado. The game was I suppose what you’d call a pitcher’s duel as Chase Dollander and Trevor Williams held each other’s respective offenses to a pair of runs through five plus, although Williams gave up eight hits while walking one and striking out six over 5.1 innings and Dollander gave up six hits while walking none but only striking out a pair over six innings even. The highlight of the game was one James Wood, however, who accounted for all four Nationals runs scored, with the first pair coming in the fourth:

and if we said he's an all-star? pic.twitter.com/uhwO499g2i

— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) June 19, 2025

He got to play the true hero in the bottom of the 11th, as the Nats found themselves down to their final out:

WOOD YOU BELIEVE IT pic.twitter.com/mJmYlHpSta

— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) June 19, 2025

Wood has gotten more regular at pulling the ball in the air, but I remain in awe of his aversion to really letting it rip while still being able to hit no-doubters to all fields. In fact, his exit velo is going to be setting a new franchise record soon, and probably by a lot:

JAMES WOOD110.0 mphMost 110+ mph home runs in a season, Nationals under Statcast (2015):2021 Kyle Schwarber: 112025 James Wood: 102018 Bryce Harper: 9

— (@slangsonsports.bsky.social) 2025-06-19T18:10:15.557Z

Kurtz You, Nick!

And while we’re talking about walkoff homers, let’s zoom back over to the West Coast, where the A’s were taking on the Astros. A’s starter Jacob Lopez has had quite an up-and-down year so far, but last night was certainly a high, as he stifled the Houston offense across six innings, giving up four hits and only one run. He did walk three, but piled up nine strikeouts to go with them. Unfortunately, the bullpen in Sacramento continues to struggle, as J.T. Ginn gave up a pair of runs over 1.2 innings and Mason Miller was unable to convert the save opportunity, giving up the tying run over 1.1 innings of work. The Astros brought in Josh Hader to work the 10th inning, but he only recorded a strikeout of Max Muncy before…

NICK KURTZ. CLUTCH.

That's his second #walkoff homer this WEEK! pic.twitter.com/NX0MyEXJNb

— MLB (@MLB) June 20, 2025

That’s Nick Kurtz absolutely getting into one to straightaway center for his second walkoff dinger of the series. Kurtz scuffled a bit when he was first called up, but over the past week, he’s hitting .310/.333/.793 with four homers, so it looks like the bat we were all expecting is starting to break out.

Damn, Yankees

And at last, our long national nightmare is over: the Yankees stopped their losing streak at six games with a 7-3 win over the Angels in the Bronx yesterday. Carlos Rodón improved to 9-5 on the year, picking up the W with a six-inning start in which he gave up three runs, all earned, on four hits and a walk while striking out seven. The Angels scored all three of their runs via solo homers, and while the Yankees more than doubled their total in the win, only three came via the long ball. While the second inning featured back-to-back home runs from Trent Grisham and Paul Goldschmidt:

Trent Tank 💪 pic.twitter.com/ZYkcZR9BNH

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) June 19, 2025

Goldy got a hold of that one 🔥 pic.twitter.com/8XobbaRCxg

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) June 19, 2025

The other four runs were scored off a Giancarlo Stanton groundout (although since it was G, it was 95.1mph off the bat), a Cody Bellinger line drive single, an Anthony Volpe groundout (since he is not G, it was only 47.6mph off the bat), and a rather shallow Austin Wells sac fly. But a win’s a win!

Best Moments From Yesterday

Jac Jamz

Jac Caglianone got his first big league home run down in Texas yesterday during a 4-1 Royals win, and it was pretty incredible all around. 106.5mph off the bat at 35 degrees, it traveled 387 feet in a hurry. But you gotta see where the pitch was actually located:

Jac Jack No. 1 for Royals top prospect Caglianone:

— Sam Dykstra (@samdykstramilb.bsky.social) 2025-06-19T19:26:09.796Z

Sam has a follow-up post from the side and…how?!

Catch that Jac Caglianone homer from another angle, and see how high the pitch really was:

— Sam Dykstra (@samdykstramilb.bsky.social) 2025-06-19T19:26:58.542Z

Ok then, Jac.

Armstrong, Legs Fast

While the Cubs didn’t end up winning their tilt against the Brewers yesterday, Pete Crow-Armstrong did absolutely demolish a ball in the first inning for a two-run shot: