Three up, three down: Manny Machado heats up; tempers flare in another brawl

A look at what’s trending this week in Major League Baseball:

3 UP

Cashing in: Manny Machado’s walk-off home run against the Angels last week was his third of the game, but he isn’t just beating up on the Angels. The Baltimore Orioles’ star has 10 home runs this month. He didn’t get his batting average above .230 for good until after the All-Star break, and even still his .817 on-base-plus-slugging percentage is in line with his career mark of .812. He’s 25, just three months older than Bryce Harper. Both can be free agents after next season, with the looming question of who might be the better bet at $400 million: Machado, who can play shortstop and third base, with 133 career home runs and on pace to play 150 games for the fourth time in five years, or the injured Harper, the Washington Nationals outfielder, with 150 career home runs and one 150-game season?

Old and new: Bartolo Colon’s improbable revival continued Friday, when he pitched the Minnesota Twins to a 6-1 victory. The Atlanta Braves cut him in June, when he had an ERA over 8.00. He pondered retirement after his first start with the Twins, but he’s 4-1 with a 3.21 ERA this month. With the Twins in wild-card position, it is possible that Colon could make a postseason start against the Boston Red Sox. Colon, 44, made his first postseason start in 1998 — against the Red Sox, in a game in which the losing pitcher was Dee Gordon’s dad. Someone new? Rhys Hoskins was 3 months old when Colon signed his first pro contract. Hoskins, 24, the Philadelphia Phillies’ rookie outfielder, set a major league record by hitting nine home runs in his first 54 at-bats. (The Dodgers’ Cody Bellinger hit nine in his first 85 at-bats.)

Sibling rivalry: Of all the player nicknames adorning jerseys this weekend, our favorite is “Corey’s Brother,” proudly worn by Kyle Seager, the Seattle Mariners’ third baseman. The brothers are having quite the long-ball competition this season. Kyle has 19, and so does kid brother Corey, the Dodgers’ shortstop. Last year, in Corey’s first full season, Kyle hit 30 and Corey 26. The nickname competition? Kyle won by knockout, since Corey skipped a nickname this weekend and kept “Seager” as the name on his jersey. “He’s boring,” Kyle told the Seattle Times. “You’ve gotta do better than that. If you’re going to play that good, then you gotta do something.”

3 DOWN

The old brawl game: What was most notable in the aftermath of Thursday’s fight fest between the Detroit Tigers and New York Yankees — three bench-clearing brawls, five suspensions, eight ejections — was the Tigers’ Alex Wilson admitting he threw at the Yankees’ Todd Frazier, without the usual “ball slipped” lies meant to keep suspensions and fines as light as possible. But we couldn’t help but think of the San Francisco Giants’ Mike Morse, who sustained a concussion in May, trying to break up a fight triggered when the Giants’ Hunter Strickland avenged a 3-year-old slight by throwing at Harper. Morse has not played since then; his career appears over. Time for MLB to adopt the NHL rule: Anyone rushing from the bench to join a fight can be severely punished. If you throw at a guy’s head, you’ll be fighting him alone.

Decades of wait: The Tampa Bay Rays sold 8,264 tickets to a major league game on Wednesday, their smallest crowd in 11 years. Commissioner Rob Manfred, in town for the day, told civic leaders to hurry up with the long-awaited plan for a new ballpark. He didn’t explain why they should pay for it. California taxpayers know better, so the Oakland Athletics know they’ll be paying for the new ballpark they’ve promised fans for almost two decades. The A’s have said they’ll reveal a ballpark site and construction timeline this year, but league officials quietly are worried the team might announce a preference for a downtown ballpark rather than a commitment to build one. Get on with it, please, lest you kill the last of a long-suffering fan base all too aware that the season “Moneyball” chronicles happened 15 years ago.

Cats and birds don’t mix: After a stray cat scampered across the Busch Stadium field this month, just before Yadier Molina hit a grand slam, the St. Louis Cardinals announced they would adopt the “Rally Cat” and give it a home in their clubhouse. The nonprofit St. Louis Feral Cat Outreach group that captured and cared for the cat declined to turn it over, charging the Cardinals were “more interested in exploiting the cat for commercial interests.” The Cardinals’ response, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “We would dispute their version of things, but don’t want to be engaged in a cat fight.” The final word, from the nonprofit: “Nobody likes a bully in the litter box.”

SERIES OF THE WEEK

Rays at Royals

Monday through Wednesday

It will be September this time next week, about time for some teams to play like contenders in the American League, where only four teams are more than three games out of a playoff spot but seven teams are within three games of .500. The Tampa Bay Rays and Kansas City Royals are two of those teams. The low-budget Rays have taken flyers on reliever Sergio Romo, cut by the Dodgers, and infielder Danny Espinosa, cut by the Angels and Seattle Mariners. Espinosa hasn’t yet played, but Romo has a 2.20 ERA in 13 appearances. The Royals’ Mike Moustakas needs one home run to tie the club record of 36, set by Steve Balboni in 1985. How closely is Balboni tracking Moustakas? “Honestly, not all,” Balboni told the Kansas City Star.

bill.shaikin@latimes.com

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