THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: One more reason to get upset at the Astros

Yes, I passed fifth grade math.

Therefore, I’m aware that the Mariners still have a chance to make the playoffs.

Simple.

They need to win all three weekend games against Texas, and have the Astros and/or Toronto drive off a cliff like Thelma and Louise.

Beating the Rangers on Thursday helped.

Plenty.

But since their fate is no longer in their own hands, the Mariners not only have to win, but have somebody else kind of fall apart.

If they somehow sweep the weekend, though, they don’t need as MUCH help.

I’m painting the possibility of a pretty picture because the one on my mind is very, very unpleasant.

Going through all this advanced mathematics is necessary because the Mariners lost that damn Wednesday night showdown to Houston.

And I’ve got to tell you that, much like the rest of America, I have truly come to loathe the Astros.

This is the organization that cheated its way to a World Series victory in 2017, and they’d probably do it again if they could figure out a way to avoid getting caught.

There is something distasteful about the Astros — whether they have a few nice guys on the roster or not.

I WAS not shocked by that absurd outburst from Hector Neris.

Why?

Because it’s Houston, and I think one of the Astros’ plans coming into that series, against a team that had handled them earlier in the year, was to wind up Julio Rodriguez.

When the Mariners star either tries to seize the moment and win a game by himself — or when he makes it personal — he loses some of the focus that’s allowed him to perform his super heroics.

So, the Astros threw him junk pitches off the plate, and curve balls in the dirt, knowing that with runners on base in such a massive game he might swing at anything.

It worked.

Then after a critical strikeout, why not yell and insult him?

That was SO Houston.

We know now that Neris used a homophobic slur during his shouting at Julio — something that should get him suspended by MLB.

What, did the clown think that nobody else at T-Mobile Park could speak Spanish?

By the way, the normally cool Eugenio Suarez got angry and involved in that spat, specifically because Astros catcher Martin Maldonado — who can invent a beef with anyone on Earth — got himself into the middle of things.

Maldonado is a particularly annoying creep who manages to get all kinds of disturbances fired up.

Somebody needs to call him on it.

Or throw him into Elliott Bay.

All this nonsense, and especially the shouting at Julio, is enough to bring back all those ill feelings about the Astros.

Remember when Houston was being “punished” for the garbage can caper, with the manager and GM fired — but there were no suspensions for the players?

That was just plain wrong, despite MLB’s weak explanation that they needed to let players off the hook so they could compile evidence.

It was a load of crap.

Fans pay to see the Astros stars, not guys in the front office, and MLB knows it.

One of the moves the Houston organization made, completely to kiss up to baseball fans around the country, was hiring Dusty Baker as manager.

BAKER is viewed as a kindly old gentleman who gave the Astros a touch of class.

In fact, Dusty has a heart of stone when it comes to competing.

He can be a mean SOB, the kind of manager to stir up trouble by saying he’s tired of his batters getting hit by pitches.

That was his spiel after a couple of Astros got hit completely by accident on Monday night — something he implied that his choirboy pitchers would never do.

Dusty was making up something false (you might call it lying), and was well aware of the spark he was setting off.

Fact-checking proved that Houston pitchers have hit Mariners players far more often than the other way around — not just this season, but over the past few years.

Baker knew that his players wouldn’t be reading all that, though, and would just remember that the Mariners pitchers were trying to kill them.

That’s the kind of thing Hector Neris might have had in mind when he went berserk and started screaming at Rodriguez.

I’m guessing Dusty was pleased with the benches emptying and all the rest of it.

Why?

The Astros had been in a serious funk, losing 10 of their previous 14 games — including a totally preposterous 1-5 record at home against Oakland and Kansas City.

The crafty old manager woke them up by making them hate the Mariners.

Of course, Dusty doesn’t care if all this carries over, and someone takes a pitch to the chin next year.

He just wants to get back to the World Series.

And people wonder why we hate the Astros.

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Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press four times each week, normally Tuesday through Friday unless, you know, stuff happens.

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”