Move back into 1st in AL West is Mariners' cue to bury the Astros for good

The Seattle Mariners chose to go all-in at the July 31 trade deadline, but even they might not have expected the returns to be immediate. The MLB season is long, and even the good teams tend to take one step back for every two steps forward.

And yet, here's the deal less than two weeks later: The Mariners have won eight games in a row and have moved into a tie with the Houston Astros for first in the American League West.

You just love to see it, even if the M's latest win was a nail-biter. Josh Naylor's RBI single in the first inning was the only run they got against the Orioles in the opener of a three-game series in Baltimore on Tuesday. And after George Kirby breezed through seven shutout innings, Andrés Muñoz was literally feeling the heat so strongly that he needed a hydration break in the middle of the ninth inning.

All's well that ends well, as they say. The Mariners held on to win 1-0, after which they surely turned their attention to see whether the Astros would maintain their 1.0-game lead in the AL West with a win over the Boston Red Sox.

They did not, instead getting their butts handed to them by a 14-1 final. And if they weren't before, now the Astros are in real trouble.

The Mariners have what they need to dig in their heels in 1st place

The AL West race is, of course, far from over. The Mariners and Astros have exactly as many wins (67) through 120 games, and each still has 42 left to play. And no, we're not blind to the fact that the division has gone to Houston four times in a row and in seven of the last eight seasons.

Yet lest anyone accuse us of being biased — which we clearly are, but whatever — the wind is very obviously blowing in the direction of the Mariners.

With eight wins in a row and 10 out of 11 since they brought Eugenio Suárez home back on July 30, the Mariners have taken over as the hottest team in the American League. They have also taken the lead on the Astros in the odds race at FanGraphs, which has Seattle's chances of winning its first AL West title since 2001 at 51.3 percent.

To be fair, the Astros would be in even deeper trouble right now if they hadn't responded to the Mariners' deadline shopping with a stunner for Carlos Correa. He looked washed when he was playing for the Minnesota Twins, but it should be to nobody's surprise that he has reverted to his dominant form since returning to Houston. It was bound to happen, honestly.

The Astros have nonetheless been floundering with losses in 18 out of their last 30, and they just can't seem to string even a couple days together without sustaining another devastating injury. They still don't have Yordan Alvarez back, and now All-Star closer Josh Hader is out with a left shoulder strain.

The Mariners, by contrast, are the healthiest they've been all year, and with still more critical reinforcements standing by on the injured list.

Bryce Miller should soon be able to rejoin a rotation that has been warming with a 3.09 ERA in August. Likewise, Luke Raley and Victor Robles will soon be available to further upgrade what is already the deepest offense the Mariners have had in a long time. Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez are hitting like the superstars they are right now, and they have four All-Stars sandwiched around them.

In fact, here's a ridiculous find by OptaSTATS: In 10 games between July 30 and August 9, the Mariners became the first team ever to have a 10-game span with 20 home runs and a perfect 20-for-20 showing in stolen bases.

Barring some kind of unforeseen disaster, this is a team that ought to have a lot of Ws still ahead of it. And for the sake of the AL West race, what would really help is if they got at least two more between September 19 and 21.

That is when the Mariners and Astros will meet for the last time in the regular season, and nothing less than the season series will be at stake. It is currently tied at five wins apiece, so whoever gets to seven wins first will earn a critical tiebreaker.

Of course, whether that series will truly end up mattering is a good question at this point. Simply by catching up to the Astros, the Mariners have made it abundantly clear that they aren't going to be easy to keep up with.