With yet another brilliant start in a 4-1 win in Tampa Bay on Friday night, Giants’ starter Madison Bumgarner made a little bit of franchise history. The lanky lefty is currently on a nine-start streak of pitching at least seven innings while allowing two earned runs or less. That stands as the second-longest in franchise history, behind Ferdie Schupp of the then New York Giants, who had 12 such starts between the 1916 and 1917 seasons. This impressive streak has not only produced the lowest ERA of Bumgarner’s young career (2.69), but it’s also planted the 24-year-old firmly in the middle of the Cy Young race.

The Giants’ de facto ace is showing no signs of slowing down either, especially after tying his season-high in strikeouts with 11 against a baffled Rays lineup. He was clinical with the slider, throwing the pitch a season-high 53 times with an impressive 35 of those tosses going for strikes. That’s been par for the course for Bumgarner this season because no pitcher in baseball favors his slider as much as the Giants’ lefty.

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@Marlins 10, Indians 0 — Unstoppable force, meet No-Way Jose Fernandez. Miami’s precocious ace prolonged his coming-of-age party — his 21st game was his first at age 21 — with a gem more brilliant than the last one, throwing a 14-K roadblock in front of Cleveland’s 8-win streak.

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Smashing success and Philadelphia Phillies’ baseball are two phrases that haven’t been uttered in the same sentence very often over the 131 year history of the franchise. No professional sports team has suffered more defeats and few teams have tasted glory less often than the boys in Philadelphia. By the time the Phillies moved out of Veteran’s Stadium one magical, Steve Carlton-fueled run in 1980 was all that stood between the Phillies and an 0-for-the-century.

But with the move to shiny, new Citizens Bank Park in 2004 came a shiny, new ball club. In 2005 the team hired Charlie Manuel, who has been the most successful manager in franchise history, and gave the full-time 1st base job to Ryan Howard, who would go onto win the Rookie of the Year Award and then an MVP.  2006 saw the arrival of Cole Hamels, a future World Series MVP who fit nicely alongside a deep, talented offense chalked full of All-Stars. By 2007 the franchise had captured their first division title in 14 years, which would set off a run of 5 straight NL East crowns. And then in 2008 they finally hit pay dirt, capturing a World Series title in 5 games over the Tampa Bay Rays.

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Royals 7, @Twins 2 — Justin Maxwell left a team that went 11-29 in games he played this year and lent an instant hand to the hottest club around, with a hit, a walk, a run and a ribby. Two sac flies and three RBI groundouts punctuated K.C.’s 9th straight win, matching their best since 1994. This streak and that one both began on July 23, with a labor-management cloud hanging over baseball.

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@Indians 6, White Sox 5 (10 inn.) — Carlos Santana led off the home 10th with a full-count home run, and after a game such as this, even the hard-bitten Cleveland fans should be able to read this without feeling doomed: The Indians have taken over a wild-card spot.

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Who’s up for a Bucs-Rays World Series? I foresee great entertainment for real baseball fans, and weak ratings to frustrate the network — a win-win!

@Pirates 2, Cardinals 1 (1st game, 11 inn.) — After two Bucs got free passes, Alex Presley singled to win it, pushing the Pirates atop the NL Central with the nightcap pending. Presley’s hit came on a full count and glanced off the glove of rookie southpaw Kevin Siegrist, who’d allowed just 4 hits and a run in his first 14 innings and might have escaped with a DP had he let it go through. It was Pittsburgh’s 6th game-ending hit, each by a different player, and gave them the majors’ best record at 63-42.

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Rays 2, @Red Sox 1 — In a game rescheduled by rain, 8th-inning showers stalled David Price’s bid for the first 5-win July in Tampa history, and twice his relief nearly blew the lead. But Fernando Rodney escaped his self-imposed jam by striking out Mike Napoli, and the Rays nipped back into 1st place by a half-game.

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@Yankees 6, Rays 5 — GTFOOH! The Captain homered on the first pitch he saw from Matt Moore, and Alfonso Soriano’s 4th hit of the game won it in walk-off style, turning Hideki Matsui Bobblehead Day into an Old-Timers’ shindig.

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With division and wild card rival Tampa Bay coming into town for a 3 game set, the Yankees were in dire need of a dominate performance from their $182 million dollar staff ace. New York entered play on Friday just 2.5 games behind Baltimore in the chase for the 2nd Wild Card and with the newly re-acquired Alfonso Soriano en tow, the deficit was looking a little more manageable. Unfortunately for New York CC Sabathia may no longer be the ace he once was. Heck, right now he isn’t even the ace of his own staff. That designation belongs to Hiroki Kuroda and his shiny 2.51 ERA.

After Friday night’s shellacking , CC Sabathia now has an ERA of 4.65. That mark stands as the highest of his career. It’s worse than the 4.38 ERA he posted as a rookie in 2001 when hitters were pummeling pitchers into submission night after night. And his ERA isn’t the only problem. The big lug is allowing more hits and homers than at any point in his career and more disturbingly, his fastball velocity is sitting 2 mph below his career norm.

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Four 1-0 games in one day?!? There was one other day this year with two such games. Last June 13 had three, as did 2010-09-11, 2009-07-01, 2004-09-19 and 2004-06-08. There were six in three days starting 2005-08-12. But if I’m not mistaken, the last day with four 1-0 games was 2001-09-02. (You’ll have to poke around to find which one of those was most memorable.)

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