Orioles 10, @Mariners 4: It’s the first time any team has scored 10+ runs at Safeco Field since 2011-08-30. The total of 14 runs is the 2nd-highest in Seattle this year, and is more than twice the season average of 6.32 R/G. That would be the lowest combined home scoring average for any MLB team that employed the designated hitter. In the live-ball era, just 23 teams have had lower averages at home, 6 of those in 1968.

• Pop quiz: Since 1901, what team had the lowest average Runs Allowed at home in a season? (Hint and answer at bottom of post.)
• Also the first game in Safeco this year with 5+ HRs.
• Bucking the trend, John Jaso has hit .284/.900 in Seattle, .271/.804 away. Among the team’s 10 regulars (250+ PAs), the next-best home BA is .232 by Dustin Ackley; the next-best home OPS is .668 by Michael Saunders.
• Chris Tillman has 8 wins in 12 games. If he were to pitch no more this year, he would be the 3rd since 1901 with 8+ wins in 12 games or less, joining Ken Holtzman (1967) and Tiny Bonham (1940), who each won 9. If Tillman were to win 2 of his presumed 3 remaining starts, he would be the 3rd starter since 1901 with 10+ wins in 15 games or less, joining Cal Eldred (1992, 11 wins) and Jim Kaat (1972, 10 wins). Bonham and Eldred were rookies, while Holtzman and Kaat got injured in the midst of outstanding years, each posting a career-best ERA+. (P.S. Aaron Small in 2005 had 10 wins in 15 games, but 2 wins came in relief.)
• On the other end of the spectrum, Hector Noesi is now 2-12 in 18 starts (plus 2 relief games with no decision). That’s not quite as unusual as Tillman’s record, but there have been just 20 seasons from 1901-2011 with 12+ losses in 20 games or less. (Nate Eovaldi also has 12 losses this year, in just 19 games, all starts.) And there have been 41 prior seasons with 2 wins or less in 18+ starts. (Two others this year meet that standard, but they’re Rockies, pitching in with restrictions that almost preclude them from getting a win even if they did pitch well … which they generally don’t.)
• Adam Jones tied a career high with 4 Runs. Both times he’s done that, he went 3 for 4 with a double, a walk and a groundout, in a road victory — once for Baltimore at Seattle, the other for Seattle at Baltimore.
• Jones is the first Oriole this year to score 4 times in a game … since 2009-06-14. Every other team in baseball had at least one such game in between. Baltimore’s last 5-run game — the only one since the franchise moved from St. Louis — was by Cal Ripken on 1999-06-13.
• Taylor Teagarden finished up behind the plate, but didn’t get to bat, alas. Teagarden has 3 doubles, 2 HRs and 1 single. The record for extra-base hits with 1 single or less is 7 (and counting), by Leonys Martin this very year.
• Baltimore is 5-3 since they lost Nick Markakis.

Pirates 3, @Cubs 0: Darwin Barney had Chicago’s only 2 hits, a pair of singles. It’s the _ game this year in which one player had 2+ hits and the rests of his teammates had none. Barney joins A.J. Pierzynski (2012-06-06), Billy Butler (2012-07-26), Adrian Gonzalez (2012-08-02), Paul Goldschmidt (2012-08-06) and Asdrubal Cabrera (2012-08-10).

• It’s the 2nd time this year that only one Cub got a hit against Pittsburgh.
• Travis Wood struck out 5 straight Pirates from the 3rd through 5th innings and finished with a career-best 9 Ks. Cubs pitchers set a season high with 15 Ks. Rafael Dolis (remember when he was anointed the closer for about 15 seconds?) struck out the side for the first time in his young career.
• It’s been a long fall, but Pittsburgh is still only 2 games behind St. Louis in the you-know-what column, as is Milwaukee. Alas for us drama-seekers, the ‘burghers and the brats square off for 3 games starting Tuesday.

@White Sox 5, Tigers 4: Doug Fister couldn’t hold a 3-0 lead in the 4th, plunking the .239-hitting #9 man Gordon Beckham to bring in one run before Dewayne Wise‘s tracer on a 3-and-1 hanger tied the game. Detroit went back ahead the next inning, but further damage was squelched by Jhonny Peralta‘s 2nd GDP of the game (18th of the year) and Brennan Boesch‘s 3rd straight inning-ending out stranding a man on 3rd base. But Fister found instant trouble, driven out by a single and double that put men on 3rd and 2nd with no outs. Enter the recently-returned Al Alburquerque, who fanned 27 in 14 IP during his minor-league rehab. He didn’t get any Ks here, but he almost escaped the jam — a split second was the difference in the biggest play of the game, one that likely pricked Detroit’s gonfalon bubble while propelling Chicago towards the tourney for the first time since they won this 2008 play-in.

• Watch the clip all the way to catch Prince‘s two mistakes in trying to “come up” with the bouncing throw: First, the game situation called for caution, not derring-do, since only the tying run would have scored if he had just knocked it down. Two, it doesn’t look as though Prince ever got his glove all the way to the ground before starting upward. Yes, it seems that he comes by his dWAR honestly….
• Had Detroit rallied, this would have gone down as the biggest dual baserunning boner of the year, if not the century — Wise makes the 3rd out at 3rd base before the run can score, and (according to the announcers) Beckham wasn’t busting towards home. And Country Joe was dead-on this time.
• There’s a lot of luck built into Nate Jones‘s 8-0 record, but still — he hasn’t been charged with a run in his last 14.2 IP.
• The longest searchable streak of relief wins to start a career is 12 by Butch Metzger; his 10 in 1976 is also the longest in one season, besting the 9 by Whitey Ford and Joe Pate (who?).

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Pop quiz hint: They went 31-20 at home in the regular season, 2-1 in the postseason.

Pop quiz answer.