HOUSTON (AP) \u2014 Yainer Diaz homered and tied a career high with four hits and Isaac Paredes and Christian Walker also went deep to lead the Houston Astros to an 11-2 rout of the Texas Rangers Friday night that put them in first place in the AL West.<\/p>\n
Jeremy Pe\u00f1a had three RBIs and Yordan Alvarez added two as the Astros tied a season high with 18 hits for their ninth win in 10 games to move a half-game ahead of Texas atop the division.<\/p>\n
There were runners on first and third with one out in the second when LaMonte Wade Jr. doubled to make it 1-0. Nathan Eovaldi (10-9) plunked Pe\u00f1a on the arm to load the bases with two outs.<\/p>\n
Alvarez followed with a single on a grounder to left field to score two and push the lead to 3-0. <\/p>\n
Cam Smith tripled with two outs in the fourth before Pe\u00f1a extended his hit streak to 12 games with a single that made it 4-0.<\/p>\n
Paredes and Walker hit back-to-back home runs off Eovaldi to open the fifth inning and leave Houston up 6-0.<\/p>\n
Joc Pederson homered and Corey Seager doubled and had two hits for the Rangers in his return after missing 23 games with inflammation in his lower back as they dropped a third straight.<\/p>\n
Pederson\u2019s home run to right-center field cut the lead to 6-1 in the sixth. Evan Carter hit an RBI single with two outs in the sixth to make it 6-2.<\/p>\n
Diaz\u2019s solo homer was the first of four runs Houston scored with two outs in the seventh that pushed the lead to 10-2. <\/p>\n
Houston starter Hunter Brown (3-1) yielded six hits and two runs in 5 2\/3 innings. <\/p>\n
Eovaldi allowed 10 hits and tied a season high with six runs in five innings.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUp Next<\/p>\n
Texas RHP Jacob deGrom (7-6, 3.67 ERA) opposes RHP Ronel Blanco (0-1, 8.10) when the series continues Saturday night.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/MLB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON (AP) \u2014 Yainer Diaz homered and tied a career high with four hits and Isaac Paredes and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[25380,557,56,58,57],"class_list":["post-394371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-ap-sports","tag-associated-press","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394371","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=394371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}