By Ryan Divish

The Seattle Times

SEATTLE—A must-win game? It may not fit the label, but it was somewhere close and the Seattle Mariners prevailed.

Closer Edwin Diaz, who struggled in his previous outing, allowed the tying run to reach base in the top of the ninth, but retired the next three batters to notch his 32nd save and secure a 4-3 win over the Angels on Friday night.

With the Mariners’ postseason hopes holding a faint pulse having lost three in a row to Houston, a change was needed in the series against a fellow wild-card contender.

Mike Leake and Ben Gamel helped do that.

Leake gave his new team another solid outing while Gamel hit a big three-run homer and saved a run on a brilliant leaping catch at the wall, helping the Mariners improve to 70-71 on the season.

Similar to his previous outing at Safeco, which was his Mariners debut, Leake allowed hits to the first three batters he faced. Brandon Phillips singled back up the middle, Mike Trout doubled to left and both runners scored on Justin Upton’s single to right-center.

Down 2-0 before facing a fourth batter isn’t ideal. But like his previous start, Leake stopped the carnage. He worked out of the first inning without further damage, aided by a double play off the bat of Albert Pujols. It started a string of 13 straight batters retired.

Meanwhile, the Mariners stormed back against Rickey Nolasco, a middling pitcher who had somehow thrown a shutout against them earlier in the season.

With two outs in the second inning, Gamel smashed a three-run homer into the right-field seats to give Seattle a 3-2 lead. Mitch Haniger tacked on another run to the lead in the third inning with a bases-loaded RBI single to make it 4-2.

With Nolasco struggling, manager Mike Scioscia lifted him with two outs in the fourth inning. With expanded rosters, Scioscia used four different relievers to piece the rest of the innings together and keep Seattle at four runs.

The Angels broke Leake’s stretch of four scoreless innings with Pujols’ RBI single to left that scored Upton from second to narrow the Mariners’ lead to 4-3.

Leake worked six innings, giving up three runs on six hits with no walks and five strikeouts.

The Mariners used three pitchers—Ryan Garton, James Pazos and Emilio Pagan—to retire one batter each in the seventh inning, while Nick Vincent exorcised some of his past failures against the Angels with a scoreless eighth inning.

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