The Seattle Mariners are making the Houston Astros feel the heat in the race for the one guaranteed playoff spot in the AL West.

Stacy Rost: Mariners have chance to be the ‘big bad’ in AL

At the same time, the Mariners have put some healthy distance between themselves and their challengers for the third and final wild card.

Full MLB standings

Here’s a closer look at where the M’s sit in the AL postseason picture.

AL West

The Mariners applied pressure on the Astros (72-60) with Wednesday’s victory. Seattle is now just one game back of Houston, which still has a 5:10 p.m. home game against the MLB-worst Colorado Rockies (38-94) to play.

Astros’ Yordan Alvarez returns from injury after 3 1/2 months

The M’s will be off Thursday while the Astros are set to finish their series with Color

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