{"id":388489,"date":"2026-07-28T01:43:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T01:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/388489\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T01:43:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T01:43:09","slug":"joc-pederson-powers-rangers-past-mariners-with-two-homer-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/388489\/","title":{"rendered":"Joc Pederson powers Rangers past Mariners with two-homer game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joc Pederson homered twice to drive in four runs and Ezequiel Duran and Jake Burger also went deep for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/texas\/sports\/rangers\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Texas Rangers<\/a> in a 7-3 victory over the Seattle Mariners on Monday. They took three of four in the series to stretch their AL West lead to 2 1\/2 games.<\/p>\n<p>All four homers came in the first three innings off George Kirby (8-9). The right-hander had been 9-1 with a 1.33 ERA in his previous 13 career starts against the Rangers.<\/p>\n<p>Texas righty Kumar Rocker (4-8) struck out seven while allowing two runs over 6 2\/3 innings. He had thrown one hit ball over six scoreless innings six days earlier in a win against the Chicago White Sox.<\/p>\n<p>The Rangers (54-52), the only AL West team with a winning record, had a half-game lead over the Mariners before winning the first two games of the series. Seattle (52-55) won 6-4 Sunday, when Texas lost for the first time this season when leading after six innings.<\/p>\n<p>Pederson got Texas started with his fifth leadoff homer, and the 32nd of his career. The opposite-field liner to left-center extended his hitting streak to eight games.<\/p>\n<p>After Randy Arozarena&#8217;s tying homer in the second, Pederson hit a three-run shot in the bottom of the inning. Pederson&#8217;s 19th homer, his 13th hit in a span of 29 at-bats, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/video\/george-kirby-in-play-run-s-to-joc-pederson-icuwlj?partnerId=web_multimedia-search_video-share\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">landed in the first row of seats<\/a> just beyond the wall in right.<\/p>\n<p>Duran led off the third with a second-deck shot to left for his 12th homer. Three batters later, Burger had a two-run homer, his 19th time going deep, for a 7-2 lead.<\/p>\n<p>It was the third time in Kirby&#8217;s 132 starts over five seasons that he allowed four homers in a game. He struck out three without a walk in four innings.<\/p>\n<p>The Mariners and Rangers both open road series against league leaders on Tuesday night. Texas is at American League-best Tampa Bay, and Seattle heads to Los Angeles to play the National League-leading Dodgers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joc Pederson homered twice to drive in four runs and Ezequiel Duran and Jake Burger also went deep&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[42750,77357,154,27,29,28,429],"class_list":["post-388489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-seattle-mariners","tag-sports","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-rangers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}