The Seattle Mariners beat the Philadelphia Phillies 4-1 on Tuesday night at T-Mobile Park, improving to 64-69 on the season. 

Though the M's have received significant attention for the 22-0 bludgeoning they took at the hands of the Milwaukee Brewers last week and the 19-2 beating they got from the Chicago Cubs on Sunday, the Mariners have played better of late.

In fact, they've gone 5-3 through a difficult eight-game stretch against Milwaukee, Chicago and Philadelphia. They'll go for a sweep of the Phillies on Wednesday afternoon (1:10 p.m. PT) before hitting the road to Toronto for a three-game series with the Blue Jays. The Phillies had won nine straight games entering this series.

The Mariners have moved to within 2.5 games of first place in the American League West and 3.0 games of the third and final wild card spot. Fangraphs now has their playoff odds at 44.9 percent.

In the win on Tuesday, starting pitcher George Kirby was phenomenal, giving up just one run on six hits over 7.2 innings. He struck out nine and walked one, which was a major improvement from the six runs he gave up over four innings last Thursday against the Brewers.

He's now 9-10 with a 4.02 ERA.

As noted by Mariners PR after the game, Kirby recorded his 39th career home start with 6.0+ IP and 2-or-fewer runs allowed, surpassing Freddy García (38 games) and tying Mike Moore for 4th-most games in Mariners history. 

Kirby was named as one of the 50 Greatest Mariners in a celebration earlier this summer.

If you remember after Kirby's start against Milwaukee, I went on the 'Refuse to Lose Territory' podcast and talked about his pitch mix, saying specifically that he needed to get back to throwing changeups and splitters so that he had something that ran away from left-handed hitters.

Well, Kirby made the adjustment on Tuesday against a lefty-heavy lineup of Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Luis Arraez, Justin Crawford and Brandon Marsh. He threw 14 percent splitters, which is well north of his season average of two percent.

The pitch generated four swinging strikes, but it's not even really about that. It's about using the pitch to give the hitter a different look and to keep them from always cheating on a ball that will run back into them. It also is designed to take a pitch from the barrel of someone's bat to the end of it, inducing soft contact.

Kudos to Kirby on a very solid adjustment at a very important time for the Mariners.

The latest edition of the 'Refuse to Lose Territory' podcast is out, talking about the historic achievements of Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodriguez, the team's pitching dilemma's and the debut of Kade Anderson. You can listen here, or you can watch in the YouTube player below.