Morning Mound Visit: Mariners beat A’s 13-run outburst

Isabelle Minasian | Lookout Landing: The Mariners beat the A’s 13-4 to shrink their deficit in the AL Wild Card race to just 1.5 games. Seattle has now beaten Oakland 10 times in a row. With the loss, the A’s are now 3.5 games out with six games left to play.

Jay Jaffe | FanGraphs: There’s been much ado about the Cardinals’ active 16-game winning streak. Suddenly, St. Louis is looking like a formidable opponent for the runner-up in the NL West race and whoever else they might face. Here’s a reminder that late-season surges don’t mean much when the postseason rolls around.

Rob Mains | Baseball Prospectus $: Baseball is great, but it could be improved somewhat. Rob Mains has identified the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse: rising strikeouts, length of games, lack of action, and Eric Hosmer. Wait, now that I’m reading this it turns out Eric Hosmer is just the leading image.

Quick Hits

Bradley Zimmer homered off his brother Kyle Zimmer which has opened Kyle to endless razzing.

The Reds survived for another day with a 13-1 shellacking of the Pirates.

In consecutive plate appearances, Mitch Haniger hit two three-run homers.