Cincinnati Reds at Seattle Mariners

Brady Singer (5-9, 4.53 ERA) took the ball for Cincinnati against Emerson Hancock (6-4, 3.16 ERA) in Wednesday's series finale at T-Mobile Park, first pitch set for 12:40 PM PT on getaway day. Singer had won his last start against Colorado on July 17, and Hancock was working back from a scary moment his last time out.

Hancock took a comebacker off his pitching hand from Yandy Diaz in the 1st inning of his July 12 start against Tampa Bay and only lasted 1.2 innings before Seattle pulled him as a precaution. X-rays came back negative and he said afterward he was fine, but it left some uncertainty around how he'd bounce back on the mound Wednesday. Add in J.P. Crawford still sidelined with wrist soreness that scratched him from the lineup, and Seattle wasn't at full strength trying to close out the series.

None of that stopped the Mariners from scrapping. J.D. Bleday tied it with a solo homer in the 4th, and Luke Raley's single briefly put Seattle back in front. It looked like exactly the kind of game the home team, sitting atop the AL West, needed to salvage.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
CIN	0	0	0	2	0	0	3	0	0	5	8	0
SEA	0	1	0	2	0	0	0	0	0	3	7	0

Sal Stewart had other plans. His go-ahead 3-run homer in the 7th flipped a one-run game and held up the rest of the way, sending Cincinnati home with a series win in Seattle. Singer wasn't sharp all day but gutted out 6.2 innings with 6 strikeouts to get the decision, his 5th of the season.

The bigger picture cuts two different directions. Cincinnati is 47-54 and reportedly shopping arms and bats like Singer, Nathaniel Lowe, Tyler Stephenson and Eugenio Suárez ahead of the August 3 deadline, yet they just won a series against a first-place team. Seattle, at 51-52, is still in the thick of the AL West and wild-card picture, but dropping 2 of 3 to a team that's played like the worst in baseball since May is the kind of series that gets talked about if this comes down to the wire.

Sources