The Texas Rangers broke open a tie game by scoring three runs in the seventh inning and defeated the Boston Red Sox 7-3 on Wednesday in Arlington, Texas, to claim a share of first place in the American League West.
Texas (76-76) pulled level with Houston (76-76) for first place in the division, although the Astros own the tiebreaker. Houston fell 5-2 to the Kansas City Royals on Wednesday.
Rangers reliever Nate Eovaldi (11-9) pitched four scoreless innings, holding Boston to one hit.
Brandon Nimmo’s RBI double drove in Corey Seager to give the Rangers a 4-3 lead in the seventh against Erik Miller (4-1). Two batters later, Ezequiel Duran hit a two-run single that scored Jake Burger and Nimmo.
Willson Contreras homered for the Red Sox, who were limited to three hits and will try to salvage the finale of the three-game series on Thursday. Boston (82-70) holds a five-game lead over the Chicago White Sox (77-75) for the second AL wild-card spot.
Contreras hit a two-run homer, his team-high 27th, against Texas starter MacKenzie Gore to put Boston up 2-0 in the top of the first. Gore pitched four-plus innings and gave up three runs on two hits. He walked three without striking out a batter.
Josh Jung had three of the Rangers’ 13 hits. Burger and Justin Foscue each added two hits. One of Burger’s hits was a ground-rule double that drove in Foscue and cut Boston’s lead to 2-1 in the bottom of the first against starter Jake Bennett.
Texas tied the game on Foscue’s single that scored Wyatt Langford in the fourth, but Boston took a 3-2 lead in the fifth when Caleb Durbin scored on a Jakob Junis balk.
The Rangers pulled even again in the fifth. Jung hit a leadoff double against Bennett and scored on Langford’s two-out single off reliever Greg Weissert to make it 3-3. Bennett allowed three runs on eight hits in 4 2/3 innings, striking out seven and walking one.
Texas took control in the seventh and extended the lead to 7-3 in the eighth on Seager’s RBI single.
–Field Level Media
