HOUSTON – Win of the year?

On a night the Mariners flailed in vain against Justin Verlander, they took a huge swing … and connected.

HOUSTON – Maybe it’s presumptive to think of it as a potential problem since planning for postseason pitching hasn’t really been a consideration since Lou Piniella was still wearing a uniform and gas was around $1.65 a gallon.

HOUSTON – As the Mariners watched their ace and reigning American League Cy Young Award Robbie Ray winner get knocked around Minute Maid Park by the Astros Friday night, Jerry Dipoto, the president of baseball operations and consummate deal maker, was in the process of adding another ace to his team’s starting rotation.

HOUSTON — It’s unlikely the days leading into the Major League Baseball trade deadline will be quite as tumultuous as last season for the Mariners, but it could be more active.

HOUSTON – Even if hasn’t been like the domination of past seasons, where trying to beat the Astros in just one game felt like solving some complicated equation that didn’t have an answer, the frustration remains the same for the Mariners.

They came to see. To see what imagination, talent and pure, unfiltered joy could conjure up next.

What, for a fleeting moment, had the makings of the hardest of hard-luck losses turned instead, in the blink of a Cal Raleigh sprint, into one of the Mariners’ most thrilling victories of the season.

With one All-Star sitting in the dugout hoping his left sore wrist will allow him to play Tuesday, the Mariners’ other All-Star, who unwisely tried to play through a wrist strain last season to his own detriment, made sure the Mariners stopped a mini losing streak before it became something worse coming out of the All-Star break.

The starting center fielder missed his third straight game with wrist soreness and the starting left fielder limped out of the clubhouse Sunday at T-Mobile Park with an aching right ankle.

At 1:10 p.m. on what was a perfect afternoon for baseball at T-Mobile Park, Robbie Ray fired his first pitch of the game to Jose Altuve.