Seattle Mariners at St. Louis Cardinals

Josh Naylor didn’t need to follow the flight of the ball. He felt it. Heard it. And for a brief moment, so did everyone else in the stadium. The crack echoed, Naylor paused, and Busch Stadium went quiet. Then the ball landed 418 feet away. Naylor’s no-doubt, go-ahead homer in the sixth inning -- a 107.3 mph drive to right-center -- proved to be the difference in the Mariners’ 3-2 win over the Cardinals on Friday night, snapping Seattle’s eight-game road losing streak. The swing was the latest in a growing stretch for Naylor, who is quickly becoming the heartbeat of this lineup. Coming off a walk-off hit in Seattle on Wednesday, he again delivered the decisive moment. He finished 1-for-3 with a homer and a walk, but his impact stretched well beyond the box score. Two innings earlier, Naylor created a run out of almost nothing. After fouling a pitch off his foot and grimacing in the box, he worked a walk, stole second base with a perfectly timed jump and scored on Dominic Canzone’s two-out, opposite-field single. It was a sequence that captured Naylor’s style: aggressive, instinctive and relentless.