Dynasty
Nastiest GIFs
The List
Dynasty
Nastiest GIFs
The List
+

MLB News & Moments You Should Know: 7/3/2025

Kershaw Hits 3,000, Toronto Hits #1, and All-Stars Get Announced

Asher Dratel
MLB Morning News 7/3/2025

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

There were 19 games on Wednesday! That’s a lot of fireworks on the field, given we’re still a day before July 4th. Hey-o! Wherever you find yourself this holiday weekend, have fun and be safe, even professional athletes can’t deal with fireworks properly.

Don’t forget to watch every game with the Pitcher List community on Playback!

 

Today’s Headlines

 

3Kershaw

Or is it #re22pect? Last night, Clayton Kershaw notched his 3,000th career strikeout, freezing Vinny Capra with a slider on the outside corner:

Remember Capra’s name, that’ll win you a trivia night sometime.

3,000 strikeouts is one of those things that you know sounds impressive, but it’s really an incredible achievement. Kershaw is only the 20th pitcher to ever do it, and is in even more rarified air doing it all in only one uniform:

Clayton Kershaw is the 5th player to strike out 3,000 batters with one team

— Eric Stephen (@ericstephen.bsky.social) 2025-07-03T03:45:03.930Z

He also may be the last 3,000-strikeout pitcher we see for a while. Tarik Skubal was the strikeout leader for baseball in 2024, with 228 punchouts. You have to throw more than 13 seasons at that pace to hit 3,000. Kershaw has averaged 166.67 strikeouts per year for 18 years to hit this milestone! You need an astonishing combination of skill and health to even be able to theoretically approach it. The current active leader in strikeouts who hasn’t hit the 3,000 number is Charlie Morton, who has 2,124, meaning he needs roughly four Tarik Skubal Cy Young Award strikeout seasons to get there. And he’s the only active pitcher above 2,000! The guys closest even to that number are Kevin Gausman (34 years old), Sonny Gray (35 years old), and Patrick Corbin (35 years old). Gerrit Cole is currently at 2,251 career Ks, and I guess maybe if he returns from Tommy John in absolutely peak form, he can probably make a run at it, but that’s a load-bearing “if” with more stress on it than the average MLB UCL.

Sorry, I just said all of that to underscore how special of a milestone this is, and we should all really appreciate getting to see three guys hit it in the last few years.

But also, Kershaw got his three strikeouts to hit the big 3-0(-0-0) during a game, and that was more of a mixed bag for Kersh. He pitched 6.0 IP, giving up nine hits and one walk, adding up to four runs, all earned, to go with the trio of strikeouts. It looked like he was in line for a loss, as the Dodgers went into the bottom of the ninth down 4-2, but then Grant Taylor gave up a single to Michael Conforto and proceeded to walk Tommy Edman and Hyeseong Kim on eight straight balls. Shohei Ohtani hit into a fielder’s choice to score a run, and Mookie Betts tied the game with a deep sac fly off of Steven Wilson.

With two outs, Will Smith worked a walk, and Freddie Freeman lined a base hit out to right field to bring home Ohtani and win the game.

I mean, you didn’t expect anything else, right? Dodgers win 5-4, and they’re now 8.5 games up on the Padres in the NL West.

Sweepstakes For First

The Blue Jays completed their sweep of the Yankees on Wednesday, bringing them into a tie atop the AL East. Toronto jumped out to an early lead, scoring seven runs in the first inning. Alejandro Kirk singled in two runs, then Addison Barger hit a three-run shot, and Davis Schneider followed up with a two-run shot. There was one out at this point.

The Yankees managed to get out of the uh, top of the first without any further damage, but the Jays added an eighth run in the third on an Andrés Giménez RBI single. New York got back into the game with a six-run fifth inning, capped off with a Giancarlo Stanton three-run blast, his first of the season:

The Yankees added a seventh run on a Cody Bellinger groundout in the sixth, but Schneider struck again in the seventh, hitting his second two-run home run of the day:

It was Aaron Judge who brought the Yankees all the way back into the game in the eighth as he tied things up with a two-run bomb to deep, deep left field:

But it would all be for nought as the Jays scored two more runs in the bottom half of the inning off of Devin Williams, thanks to a wild pitch and an Addison Barger single. Jeff Hoffman came on in the ninth and gave up a two-out single to Trent Grisham, but was able to induce a pop-up from Ben Rice to pick up the save and move the Jays atop the standings. The Rays lurk only half a game back of both the Jays and Yankees, so these games heading into the All-Star break should be pretty impactful.

Hey Now, You’re An All-Star

Oh hey, speaking of the All-Star break, we got our position player starters!

For the National League:

Three Dodgers and two Cubs aren’t particularly surprising, although it does seem surprising that Mets fans didn’t stuff the ballot box with enough votes to get Pete Alonso on there over Freddie. I mean, Alonso deserves it on a statistical case, too.

Of course, we all predicted three Tigers on the AL team, right? It’s nice to see Ryan OHearn properly rewarded for his career year, and he’s still coming to grips with it, as he told MLB.com’s Jake Rill:

“I can’t wait to tell my dad. My mom’s freaking out,” he said. “It’s been such a journey in my career. For the majority of it, I never thought something like this was in the cards. Still kind of in shock.”

The full rosters, including reserves and the pitching staffs, will be announced this Sunday.

 

Best Moments From Yesterday

 

It’s A Young Man’s Game

Wednesday featured an incredible three doubleheader games that were the result of weather-related postponements on Tuesday, and all of them ended up being split between the teams involved. During the second game in the Tigers/Nationals pair, Jacob Young got up and climbed the OF wall to rob his erstwhile travel ball teammate Riley Greene:

That 9-4 score would hold, although Detroit is still 12.5 games up on the Twins and Guardians, and the Nats are still 14.5 games behind the Phillies (who were one of the aforementioned doubleheader splitting teams.)

Al2ve

Hey, listen, it’s late here. On Wednesday, Jose Altuve went 2-for-5 against the Rockies, with his second hit being the 2,315th of his career. That moves Altuve into sole possession of second place on the Astros franchise hits list, passing Jeff Bagwell.

He’ll need another 746 hits to pass Craig Biggio for the top spot, though, so this is likely the highest Altuve will get on the list. Houston took down Colorado by a score of 5-3, although a Seattle win means their AL West lead remains at seven games.

Profar, So Good

It’s looking more and more like Atlanta will end up being sellers at the deadline (see the injury news below for more), but they did at least get Jurickson Profar back from his 80-game PED suspension, and he returned with aplomb:

Atlanta actually scored all eight of their runs in their 8-3 win via the long ball, including this grand slam from Matt Olson:

And this Sean Murphy three-run job:

Despite the win, the Braves still find themselves seven games under .500 and 11 games behind Philadelphia in the NL East.

 

Injuries and Other Moves

 

⚾ Adding injury to insult, Atlanta announced that Spencer Schwellenbach is going to the IL with a fractured right elbow. Originally, there was talk of him being back in September, but more details made that seem more like a hope than a plan.

⚾ The Twins will also be down a pitcher for a bit, as they placed Bailey Ober on the IL with a left hip impingement. It’s been known that Ober was pitching through an injury for around a month now, which he originally said was minor enough that he could pitch through it.

⚾ We’re continuing the pitcher injury items with Detroit sending Sawyer Gipson-Long to the IL with a neck strain.

⚾ Max Muncy injured his knee during Wednesday’s game, landing awkwardly while tagging out the runner at third base. He needed to be helped off the field and is scheduled for an MRI on Thursday, at which point we’ll get a timeframe for recovery.

⚾ It’s not all bad news, though! The Tigers will be getting Reese Olson back soon, possibly as soon as Friday.

⚾ The Brewers are also anticipating the return of Brandon Woodruff this weekend, and he’s currently penciled in for Sunday’s game against the Marlins.

⚾ Texas will be getting some beef back with the return of Jake Burger, who was activated from the IL on Wednesday, with the corresponding move being Josh Jung getting optioned to Triple-A.

⚾ Atlanta has DFA’d Alex Verdugo to make room for Profar to return, which means that Brian Cashman can downgrade his trade package a little bit.

 

Articles You Should Read

 

If Junior Caminero Had Any More GDPs He’d Be Macroeconomics – Mike Baumann, FanGraphs

How Swing Direction Shapes Batted Ball Outcomes – Joshua Rodrigues, Baseball Prospectus

 

Fantasy Baseball Coverage

 

Starting Pitcher Roundup

Hitter Performances

Waiver Wire Picks

Starting Pitcher Streamers

 

Subscribe to the Pitcher List Newsletter

Your daily update on everything Pitcher List

Asher Dratel

Follow the author on Bluesky

Asher hails from Brooklyn, wears a 2008 Joba Chamberlain jersey to every Yankees game he attends, and pronounces BABIP funny. Appreciator of Beefy Lad dingers and beers. @asherd.xyz on Bluesky.

Account / Login