Sunday Morning Hot Links

Okay, so this is getting interesting. Mike Fiers was quite solid and the Astros beat the Mariners 2-1 on Yulieski Gurriel's 2-run single. As McTaggart notes, this is the first time the Astros have had back-to-back starters throw at least 6IP since August 24-25.

Mariners manager Scott Servais:
Coming into the game, I thought if we could hold them to two runs, we'd be in pretty good shape. But their guy threw the ball very well. Give him some credit. And our guys were a little anxious. I think you could see that.

Hinch:
We needed all the good pitching we could get, based on how their guy was throwing. It was another good outing by our starters, and if we can get that, we're a pretty interesting team. I like the tone our starters have set the last couple of days.

James Paxton retired the first 15 batters he faced. Fiers retired 17 of the first 19 he faced.

Everyone in front of the Astros lost. So the Wild Card race is as such:

Baltimore/Toronto (81-67): WC1/WC2
Detroit/Houston/Seattle (78-70): -3

There are 14 games left. The win and everyone else's losses jumped the Astros' playoff odds to 18.2%. FiveThirtyEight has it at 21%. If Baltimore and Toronto go 7-7 the Astros will need to 11-3.

*Fiers:
We've got a great starting rotation and maybe things haven't gone the way people want it to be, but we're still going out there and trying to do our job and not worry about everybody else. Just go game to game and I've got to do my job and tomorrow Doug's got to do his job and just go on from that.

*The Astros are asking MLB to review error calls that cost Jose Altuve hits.

*The Cardinals are unlikely to lose draft picks as a result of their breach into Ground Control. They're probably just going to get fined.

*Gary Pettis' son is a receiver at the University of Washington.

*Corpus manager Rodney Linares was a few blocks away from the explosion in Chelsea last night.

*Shohei Otani threw the fastest pitch ever recorded in the Japanese Professional League last week.

*Why 20 wins still matters