Ranking MLB playoff races: Who's primed for AL, NL wild cards? - ESPN

Baseball's best playoff race kicked into high gear in July — and it all started with «the incident.»

On July 19, the Seattle Mariners were 47-48 and in fourth place in the American League West — 10 games behind the division-leading Texas Rangers. According to FanGraphs, their odds of winning the division stood at 2.5%.

The Mariners had lost 6-3 at home to the Minnesota Twins that night — a game it looked like they'd win. The Twins scored the go-ahead run in the eighth inning on a passed ball with two outs and then added two more on a home run in the top of the ninth. In the bottom of that inning, Jarred Kelenic struck out looking with two runners on base after a nine-pitch at-bat against Jhoan Duran that included fouling off fastballs of 103 and 104 mph. He returned to the dugout, kicked the Gatorade cooler in frustration and broke his left foot.

Kelenic met with reporters the next day in the Mariners' dugout, his eyes red, pausing to wipe away the tears streaming down his face — tears that appeared to symbolize a Mariners season that began with big dreams but was starting to slip away.

It feels like an unlikely demarcation event and no doubt it's coincidental, but the Mariners took off after that, going 29-9 since. George Kirby kicked it off later that day by pitching seven scoreless innings in a 5-0 win over the Twins. Seattle had two separate eight-game winning streaks in August as Julio Rodriguez flipped the ignition key and turned on his booster rockets for a historic five four-hit games in August. A friend now sends me regular texts with the Mariners' updated win-loss record since «the incident,» as they've climbed over the Los Angeles Angels, New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays in the wild-card