Padres 5, @Mariners 4: Hang on, I’ll think o’ something….

• Everth Cabrera had the 13th known game with at least 3 steals and a triple, but no more than 1 run scored, and just the 2nd such game since 1991. Of the others, special mention goes to Tony Scott, who did it with 5 hits, including a double (1979-05-09); and to Vince Coleman, who had 2 hits, a walk and four steals, but never scored in a shutout loss to the Mets (1986-06-30).
• Among Padres with at least 20 games, Cabrera’s .278/.352/.468 ranks 1st in BA, 2nd in OBP and SLG.
• In 8 games, Logan Forsythe has reached safely 14 times, with a HR, 2 triples and a double — and scored just twice.
• Streaky: That’s a 6.37 ERA in the last 6 starts by Felix Hernandez, with almost 2 baserunners per inning. In his first 7 games, he had a 1.89 ERA and sub-1 WHIP.
• Last dozen games for Michael Saunders: 23 for 51, 3 HRs, 7 doubles, lifting his OPS+ to 134 in 60 games.
• In their past 6 years, the Mariners have been last (4 times) or next-to-last in AL walks. They’re up to 10th this year, with a 12% improvement over last year. Every little bit helps.

@Dodgers 5, Angels 2: Through 2 outs in the home 8th, it was all about Jerome Williams. He’d held LA to a run on 4 singles, while contributing to both of his own team’s runs. But he put the noose around his own neck with a 4-pitch walk to A.J. Ellis (his 35th in 50 games). His 101st pitch became a tying single by Andre Ethier; his next and last was a chest-high fastball to Juan Rivera, who apparently likes that sort of thing. And the Dodgers became the first team with 40 wins.

• It’s the 2nd time since 1983 that they’ve had 40 wins this quickly. The last 9 times they had 40+ wins by game 63, they made the playoffs.
• LA’s 6 hits, 5 Runs and 5 RBI all came from the top 4 in their lineup.
• The team from Anaheim still leads this rivalry, 51-37.

Athletics 8, @Rockies 5: Colorado has dropped 6 straight and all 7 against AL foes this year.

• Jeremy Guthrie (5 IP, 7 R, 3 HR) has allowed 9 HRs in 28.1 IP in Coors Field, and has yielded 48 runs in 56 IP over all. If only there were some way to identify HR-prone pitchers before importing them to Denver….
• The Brandon Brigade (Inge & Moss) batted 5th & 6th and accounted for 3 of Oakland’s 4 HRs, including Moss’s first 2-HR game.
• He finally hit a solo HR, but Brandon Inge is still having a “Mark McGwire” season: More RBI (28) than hits (25). There have been 18 prior seasons with 25+ hits and more RBI than hits; McGwire had 4, including the only such year with 100+ RBI, while nobody else had more than one.
• Put that in your humidor and smoke it: Rockies hurlers have allowed 47 HRs in 34 home games, tops in the NL. Stir in a .310 BA and the league’s 2nd-highest walk total, and bake until you’ve allowed 6.4 runs per game.

@Giants 6, Astros 3: Madison Bumgarner became the first pitcher to hit a home run while striking out 12 or more since Sept. 29, 2000, when Chan Ho Park tossed his first shutout (2 hits, 13 Ks) and hit his 2nd HR of the year the 2nd run of a 3-0 win. Bumgarner himself put the ball in play in all 3 ABs.

• Cheap Save Alert! Santiago Casilla got 1 out with the tying run kneeling on deck. Give him another million bucks! It’s the 2nd such cheapie in 4 days for Casilla, who owns 4 of the 13 lowest WPA saves this year.
• Or maybe the tying run was standing on deck, not kneeling. It’s hard to be sure, with Jose Altuve….
• But I guess Bochy had a schedule to keep: That makes 4 straight years that the Giants’ closer had exactly 17 saves through 62 team games. Brian Wilson did it from 2009-11. (Wilson had just 16 in 2008, the bum. Rod Beck holds the franchise mark with 19 saves through 62 games in 1997, though it proved to be more than half his total for that season. He and Wilson share the club season record of 48 saves.)
• The Panda is just 1 for 11 since his return. But as long as Melky is for them, who can ever be against them? The MelkMan’s 89 hits through 62 team games (he missed the previous 3) are the most by a Giant since 1958 (Willie Mays).
• For the 22-and-under set, Bumgarner is the active leader in IP by 413 to 150, in Starts by 65 to 25, and in Wins by 28 to 7.

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Nationals 4, @Blue Jays 2: Jose Bautista homered, doubled, and reached in all 4 trips — but the rest of the Jays got just 3 singles, none with RISP. Starter Chien-Ming Wang allowed 10 runners in 5 IP, but his backup band retired 12 of 13.

• I don’t know if Wang or southpaw Ross Detwiler (first out of the ‘pen tonight) is the better option for Washington’s #5 starter, but it’s a luxury to be able to start one and use the other in long relief. Detwiler has yet to spend a full year in the majors, but he has a 101 career ERA+ in 227 IP (116 since 2011). Used mostly as a starter this year, he’s held lefties to 7 hits in 53 ABs, making a smart followup to Wang, whose career OPS split skews 130 points towards lefties. Tonight he retired all 5 batters, 3 of them lefties, then gave way to Craig Stammen when Bautista came up (notwithstanding JB’s abnormal struggles with southpaws this year).
• Henderson Alvarez began the night with better-than-normal results when batters put the first pitch in play: his .293 BA was 32 points below the AL mark, with just 1 HR and a .707 OPS that’s 152 points below the league. This is what you might expect of a pitcher with decent success despite the world’s lowest K rate. But tonight, he gave up first-pitch HRs to Bryce Harper and Danny Espinosa in consecutive innings, both with 2 out. The 3rd HR off Alvarez came on an 0-2 pitch; he’s allowed 16 HRs in 86 IP, 5 of them with 2 strikes. But those 16 HRs have plated just 20 runs, partly because he never walks anybody (1.9 BB/9).
• Harper (4-1-3-1) now at .307/.390/.553. And this shot was juicy; it even sounded long gone.

@Orioles 8, Pirates 6: Like the first game these clubs ever played, the Bucs struck first, but the O’s came back with a 3-HR fusillade and won by 2.

• Adam Jones (5-2-4-2) had his first 4-hit game this year along with his 18th HR.
• Pittsburgh scored 6+ runs for just the 8th time, last in MLB and 10 below the median.

Mets 11, @Rays 2: What a difference an off day makes. Against the AL’s ERA-leading team, New York bagged a season high in runs. Their 6-run 7th, their biggest inning this year, started with 2 out and none on, and it began with a walk to a non-HR hitter. Then came Jordany Valdespin‘s double inside of 1st, his second 2-out RBI hit; an IBB to David Wright to set up a left-on-left matchup; a crazy massé cue shot to load the bases; a 2-run bloop by Daniel Murphy, who’d fanned in his first 3 trips and hitting .192 in his last 22 games; and for the capper, a full-count, 3-run blast by Ike Davis, his first circuit clout since May 11 and just his second 3-and-2 hit in 26 ABs this year.

• In his first trip, Davis dropped a bunt single against the shift — his first bunt of any kind in almost 1,000 big-league PAs, according to B-R.
• Valdespin has just 7 hits, but 10 RBI.
• Five Mets relievers totaled 3.2 IP, and none allowed a hit or run. Their previous high in this regard was 3.
• The only down side: the Mets’ win gave the Yanks a solo grip on first place.

Yankees 6, @Braves 4: Speaking of big innings … Mike Minor had his best game of a rocky season and turned over a 4-0 lead with 1 out and a man on in the 8th. But Jonny Venters fell behind all 4 batters, retiring none — single, walk, grand slam by A-Rod, single — and Nick Swisher broke the tie with a 1-and-0 HR off the new reliever.

• You see, Venters is the 8th-inning guy — so it doesn’t matter that he began the night with a .339 BA/.438 OBP against righties, or that the untouchable Craig Kimbrel (2 hits in his last 12 IP) hadn’t pitched in 2 days. Anyway, the rules don’t allow your closer to pitch more than one inning — Kimbrel has gotten exactly 3 outs in all 23 games this year, and hasn’t gone more than an inning in his last 95 games — so what’s a manager to do?
• CC Sabathia gave up all 10 hits and all 4 runs, but he kept the ball in the yard and rewarded his manager’s faith by retiring Jason Heyward and Chipper Jones with men aboard to end the 7th, and so he caught the win. It was the 10th time in 13 starts that the Yanks scored at least 5 runs for him, putting him once again in the top 10 in run support. He’s 8-3, 3.80 this year, and 67-26, 3.25 in 114 Yankee starts. And he’s 21-8 in 42 career interleague starts.
• Win #184 tied Sabathia with Greg Maddux for the 10th-most wins through age 31 in the live-ball era (15th since 1901).
• That’s 23 salamis for A-Rod, in 232 ABs. Seems like that number rings a bell.

@Reds 7, Indians 1: Johnny Cueto pitched the Redlegs back into sole possession of first place with his 2nd CG this year, both without a walk. He threw 81 strikes and lowered his walk rate to 1.95 BB/9, a career best. After a leadoff double by Shin-Soo Choo, Cueto allowed just 5 singles the rest of the way, only one of whom reached 2nd base.

• Last year, Joey Votto reached just 6 times in 6 games against the Tribe, 5 of them losses. Tonight he got aboard in 3 of 5 trips, including a 2-run HR on a 2-0 count that opened up a 4-1 lead in the 7th. He was ahead in the count each time up. When ahead this year, he’s hitting .427 and slugging well over .800. Just as important is the frequency: Votto has been ahead in more than half his PAs, compared to an AL average (to weed out most pitchers) of under 35%. The HR gave him the MLB lead with 37 extra-base hits.
• Votto’s career .358 BA on balls in play is tops among the 218 active players with at least 2,000 PAs.

@Royals 2, Brewers 1: Holding a 1-0 lead since Alex Gordon’s 1st-inning HR off Zack Greinke, KC gave up the tying run in the 7th on an odd sequence: Ryan Braun led off with a single to deep 3B, Milwaukee’s first hit, and reached 3rd on 2 throwing errors on the same play. After a walk, Braun challenged Gordon’s arm on a fly to left — perhaps thinking of Rickie Weeks on deck (.158, 72 Ks) — and was cut down at the plate. (Does AL news not reach Milwaukee? Gordon led the majors with 20 OF assists last year.) But Weeks came through anyway, tying the game with an RBI single. Top of the 9th, enter “K-Rod” (quotes ironic): Double, sacrifice, single, lead restored.

• The Crew got the tying to 3rd with 1 out in their half, but Jonathan Broxton came up with a clutch (and increasingly rare) strikeout, then a groundout to end it. Broxton has had no Ks in 10 of his 17 save chances; through last year, just 25 of his 117 career save opps had been strikeout-free.
• Francisco Rodriguez (291 career saves) was the youngest ever to 100 saves (age 24), 150 (26), 200 (ditto), and 250 (28). Will he reach 300? He has just 1 in 61 games since joining Milwaukee last year, and it’s hard to see him getting another closing chance with his current 1.54 WHIP and 4.50 ERA.

@Rangers 9, Diamondbacks 1: Held to a run on 4 hits through 5 innings, Texas erupted for 8 and 10 in their last 3 at-bats. Colby Lewis went the distance, allowing a solo HR; his 15 HRs allowed have scored just 19 runs, as he’s held foes to a .179 BA with RISP.

• Craig Gentry (3-1-1-2) is hitting .340 with a .413 OBP in 110 PAs. Adding fine CF defense, often as a late replacement, he’s around 2 WAR in roughly half-time play — 6th in MLB among players with 50 games or less.
• It was the 11th time Texas scored 9 runs or more, tied with Atlanta for the most in MLB. The Rangers are 16-6 in blowouts (margin of 5+), 20-20 otherwise.

@Twins 11, Phillies 7: Minnesota matched their season high in runs, scoring in 6 of their 8 times up, with at least 1 hit in every inning. They’ve won 10 of 13, while the Phils’ slide reached 9 out of 10, dropping them 9 games behind the Nationals … but only 5 behind the second wild card.

• In his return to Target Field, Jim Thome went 4-1-2-2 with a walk. He had a .955 OPS there in over 300 PAs there in the past 2 years. He still owns the season and career HR records there, with 15 and 22; no current Twin has more than 14 career or 9 in a season (both by Danny Valencia).

@Cubs 4, Tigers 3: Chicago’s game-winner scored on consecutive throwing errors by SS Jhonny Peralta, who had made just 2 errors all year. Darwin Barney drove in the first 3 runs, then drew a walk from Phil Coke to set up the game-winner. Starlin Castro was 0-for-5 with 3 Ks, but his grounder brought home the winning run. Carlos Marmol got the win. Max Scherzer (88 Ks in 70.1 IP) has a 5.76 ERA. Just an all-around nightmare for your humble narrator.