ANAHEIM -- Logan Gilbert towered over the mound at Angel Stadium on a scorching-hot Sunday, physically and metaphorically, with supreme confidence in himself and conviction in his elite pitching arsenal.

The 6-foot-6 right-hander mowed down the Halos, striking out six of his first seven batters en route to a career-high nine as Seattle surged to a 7-4 win to take two out of three against its division rivals. The Mariners are tied with the Blue Jays, who swept a doubleheader on Sunday, as the first clubs on the outside looking in for the second American League Wild Card spot at 2 1/2 games back.

Gilbert worked around traffic in his middle innings that elevated his pitch count and forced him out after just 5 1/3 innings. But his first time through the lineup was as dominant as any Mariners pitcher has been all season -- starter or reliever, rookie or veteran -- and the credibility behind his elite prospect billing continues to grow.

The Mariners have now won each of Gilbert’s past nine starts dating back to his third career outing on May 25. That ties the longest such stretch in the Majors this season with Jack Flaherty, who led the Cardinals to a win in each of his first nine starts. Over this stretch, Gilbert has a 2.66 ERA and has held hitters to a .190/.254/.310 (.564 OPS) slash line.

No team has won at least 10 straight games behind a single starting pitcher since 2019, when the Astros won Gerrit Cole’s final 13 and the Yankees won James Paxton’s final 11. Cole finished runner-up in one of the closest AL Cy Young Award votes that year.

That’s not to suggest Gilbert will thrust his way into the conversation for this year’s top pitching honor. But he certainly could be pitching his way into consideration for AL Rookie of the Year -- especially if he and the Mariners keep winning.

“When a pitcher like that takes the mound, it’s a different field for your team,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “Our team knows we’re going to be in the game. We're on our toes defensively. You know you’re going to see something special. … It’s crazy, I don’t even look at Logan as a rookie anymore.”

Gilbert’s first time through the order will rightfully dominate the highlight reel, but a case could be made that his most impressive sequence resulted in a third-inning walk to Shohei Ohtani that loaded the bases. Gilbert attacked the MLB home run leader with a bevy of changeups off the plate that fooled the two-way superstar in his first at-bat, when he literally tripped against the offspeed for strike three in the first inning.

But Ohtani didn’t budge the second time around as Gilbert missed on each of the four changeups he threw in that sequence. Yet instead of steering from his gameplan -- to not throw anything hittable to the Majors’ best slugger -- Gilbert reeled back in and overpowered All-Star Jared Walsh with four straight fastballs for a punchout to escape the jam.

More than anything, it was yet another sign of maturation.

“It's tough in the middle of the order, because they have a couple guys that can do damage there,” Gilbert said. “But we're just sticking to the plan and knowing what works best for me against him, and it happened not to work out. I put him on base, but we knew what we could do with the next guy.”

Gilbert was charged with two earned runs on Sunday, which represented two of his final three batters. He gave up a leadoff single to Max Stassi in the sixth and then a one-out double to Taylor Ward, which prompted a pitching change to JT Chargois, who served up a two-run double to José Iglesias that prevented Gilbert from going scoreless for his second straight start. The 24-year-old threw seven shutout innings his last time out against the Yankees on July 8.

In total, Gilbert threw 94 pitches, induced 47 swings and generated 18 whiffs, two shy of his previous high mark accomplished on the same Angel Stadium mound on June 6. And it’s hard to choose which offering was his best because they were all as good as ever.

Gilbert overpowered the Angels with his four-seam fastball, hitting 97 mph 11 times and averaging 95.8 mph. The slider got whiffs on nine of the 14 that the Angels swung at. And the changeup has improved from fringe-average to an elite out pitch. When he’s able to land his fastball, which he has no reservations throwing, the slider becomes much more challenging to lay off. It’s an uncomfortable cocktail in the batter’s box.

And for the Mariners, whose rotation is so banged up that they don’t even know who will start Wednesday in Denver, the guarantee of Gilbert every fifth day will be a huge catalyst in whether or not they remain in the postseason hunt in the final 11 weeks of the season. The club explicitly mapped out his innings back in Spring Training in order to allocate most of them for this stretch run.

“The growth, the potential, the ceiling that this guy has got,” Servais said, “it's going to be fun to watch it play out.”