{"id":392040,"date":"2026-07-30T14:35:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T14:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/392040\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T14:35:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T14:35:46","slug":"joc-pederson-hits-first-2-of-rangers-4-homers-in-7-3-win-over-mariners-to-take-key-al-west-series-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/392040\/","title":{"rendered":"Joc Pederson hits first 2 of Rangers&#8217; 4 homers in 7-3 win over Mariners to take key AL West series"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) \u2014 Joc Pederson homered twice to drive in four runs and Ezequiel Duran and Jake Burger also went deep for the Texas Rangers 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\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" 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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) \u2014 Joc Pederson homered twice to drive in four runs and Ezequiel Duran and Jake&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151,39233,91527,39086,63983,57463,92054,23681,202,196,42094,942,200,78829],"class_list":["post-392040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news","tag-ezequiel-duran","tag-george-kirby","tag-jake-burger","tag-joc-pederson","tag-kumar-rocker","tag-mariners-rangers-score","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-40815-ap-texas-sports-only","tag-product-40820-ap-washington-state-sports-only","tag-randy-arozarena"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392040","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=392040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}