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MITCH HANIGER

You can play in major-league baseball without being able to hit 98 mph fastballs. I would argue that it’s more usual to do so than not; hence Edwin Diaz.

However, this asterisk to the ML resume requirements seem to matter little when you are "Mitch Hot"; he got a Gerrit Cole 98-er and pulled it down the LF line to tie this particular baseball game -- taking it from a predictable 2-0 Astros lead to a weird 2-2 tie in strange circumstances.

Even more surprisingly, the Mariners wound up this far from going ahead 4-2 in the 6th inning and as the ball sailed through the air, he was counting his outs until Twin Closer time.  Then the ball caught in the webbing of Marisnick's glove, Dr. D clutched his chest again, and checked back into the hospital for his usual gown.

64 feet from a standing start to catching the liner in 3.9 seconds and Dr. D wailed in futility about the M's lost chance to save a split vs. the T-Rex and Allosaurus of 1-2 starters, Verlander and Cole.  Truly the baseball pantheon laughs at the M's this month.

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DENARD SPAN

But then in the top of the 8th, Span caught yet another 98 MPH Cole bullet on the barrel of his bat, lining it up the middle for a clean single.  Since it followed Haniger's second double off Cole, this put the M's into a 1 out, 1st-and-3rd situation and only a Jean Segura sac fly away from Twin Closer territory and lit cigars all around.

An HBP later, the M's were a Boomstick SF away.  Boom fell behind 0-2 but worked it to 3-2 with bases loaded, fastball obvious.  This was the result.

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SABE LINEUP

And, according to the M's, the new-look hyper-sabermetric lineup lives to see another day.  The Mariners scrounged seven hits, six of which again came from the first four slots in the order (and the other from Cameron Maybin).  The result:  two games against Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, and two wins.  I mean whattaya want, babe.

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MIKE LEAKE

Matched Cole pitch for pitch, sort of, if you’re going by the scoreboard rather than by strikeouts and intimidation and the radar gun and girls are running and screaming and stuff like that.

No, more seriously, he had the drop on his pitches going in through nine ground ball outs, including a couple of absolutely critical double plays.  Lest we forget, the man does get a couple inches extra drop on almost every pitch he throws, and runs fourth in the league in ground ball percentage.

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UMPING

Dr. D does enough complaining about the ump'ing when it goes to his detriment; once in a while he should mention it when it runs in his favor.  Here's the strike zone plot for Leake and here's the one for Cole.  Dr. D counts at least 4 pitches called strikes for Leake that ran outside by at least a FOOT ... for Cole, no such pitches by any means and several memorable little green squares well inside the strike zone at just the moments the Mariners need them.  I think the uniforms definitely confused the home plate blue.

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ORCS

Fell, deservedly of course, to the Angels by a 4-3 count.  Leaving the M's within 2, with two left to play in Houston and then the big three-game series coming up with Oakland immediately after.  Can the WC lead be far behind?

Enjoy,

Dr D