Good fit in lineup
Mike Fiers, left, tosses a gem with Yulieski Gurriel adding support in 2-1 win.
SEATTLE — Seattle Mariners lefthander James Paxton wasperfect through five innings.
Through six, he was losing
Yulieski Gurriel’s twoout single in the sixth inning drove in both of the Astros’ runs in their 2-1 win Saturday night at Safeco Field.
Gurriel turned on a highand-inside 98 mph fastball, capitalizing on his team’s best scoring chance in a pivotal September contest.
Chipping away at lead
For the Astros (78-70), the victory ensured they enter Sunday’s series finale with no team between them and Baltimore and Toronto in the wild-card standings. Their odds at the second wild card are remote — they must make up three games with only 14 to play — but beating the Mariners (7870) on consecutive nights kept their hopes alive.
Gurriel played the hero Saturday. Although less than a month into his longanticipated major league career, the 32-year-old Cuban star is batting .325 with an .833 on-base plus slugging percentage.
As manager A.J. Hinch said before the game, “He can really hit.”
The two runs he plated proved enough for Mike Fiers and three of the best Astros high-leverage relievers.
Shut out in Friday’s series opener, the Mariners didn’t score Saturday until the eighth inning. Seattle came into the weekend as the highest-scoring team in the majors in September with 6.85 runs per game.
Gurriel’s was the Astros’ third hit of the sixth inning after they failed to put even a runner on base in the first five. Paxton had dealt to that point, complementing his 95 to 98 mph fastball with a knuckle curve, a cutter and a changeup to hold the As- tros at bay. The27-year-old’s five perfect innings marked the longest he held an opponent hitless in his four-year major league career.
Bad sixth for Paxton
Paxton’s bid for perfection ended against Teoscar Hernandez, the first batter he faced in the sixth. Hernandez lined a single up the middle and advanced to third on a Tyler White double. Jake Marisnick’s weak groundout to third base failed to move either runner. George Springer struck out on 98 mph heat.
But down to the inning’s final two strikes, Gurriel coaxed a single between shortstop Ketel Marte and third baseman Kyle Seager. Hernandez scored easily. White narrowly beat Nori Aoki’s throw home.
“He threw a lot of fastballs early on in the first couple at-bats,” Gurriel said through a translator, “so I was looking for a fastball in that at-bat.”
The decisive sixth featured all but two of the Astros’ five hits. Paxton completed seven innings, yielding only the two runs and four hits. Fiers turned in six scoreless innings in one of his best starts of the season. He allowed only three hits and one walk, the first time Astros starters have thrown scoreless outings of at least six innings in back-to-back games since August 2015.
Starters step up
“It obviously sets the tone for the game,” Hinch said. “We needed all of the good pitching we could get based on how their guy was throwing. It was another good outing by (one of) our starters. If we can get that, we’re a pretty interesting team. We usually find a way.”
Chris Devenski worked around a pair of singles in a scoreless seventh. Hinch inserted defensive replacements at catcher (Jason Castro for Evan Gattis) and left field (Colby Rasmus for Hernandez) behind Luke Gregerson in the eighth.
Gregerson allowed the Mariners’ lone run when Seth Smith smoked a double to right-center field. But the veteran righthander escaped further damage by striking out Robinson Cano and inducing a popout to shallow left-center field from Nelson Cruz
Closer Ken Giles entered for the ninth, his first opportunity since Tuesday’s blown save against Texas at Minute Maid Park.
Giles got Seager to ground out before he struck out Dae-HoLee and Leonys Martin to close the game in 1-2-3 fashion.