ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) \u2014 Yordan Alvarez had another moonshot for his AL-leading 31st home run, LaMonte Wade Jr. hit his first career grand slam and the Houston Astros beat the Texas Rangers 9-3 on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
The Astros led for good after Alvarez, also the AL leader with 70 RBIs, hit a two-run homer 425 feet to straightaway center in the first inning, a night after a towering 455-foot blast pulled to right in the series opener. The American League All-Star starting designated hitter is one behind National League All-Star DH Kyle Schwarber for the major league lead in homers.<\/p>\n
Peter Lambert (8-5) pitched three-hit ball over six innings while striking out seven and walking one. The right-hander, who didn’t make the Astros roster out of spring training, is 6-1 with a 2.84 ERA over his last nine starts.<\/p>\n
Ezequiel Dur\u00e1n homered twice for the AL West-leading Rangers (48-47). He had a solo shot off Lambert in the fourth, and added a two-run homer in the ninth.<\/p>\n
Wade’s slam in the second was his 57th career homer and his second in nine games with the Astros (47-50). Christian V\u00e1zquez went deep leading off the third to make it 7-0, when they already had eight of their 10 hits.<\/p>\n
All three Houston homers came off Texas starter Kumar Rocker (2-8), who struck out six, but walked two and also hit a batter over 5 2\/3 innings.<\/p>\n
Alvarez, now with 201 career homers, also had a double and walked twice. He has hit .455 (10 of 22) with seven homers and 11 RBIs in six games this season at Globe Life Field.
\nUp next<\/p>\n
Houston’s Cristian Javier (0-1, 10.22 ERA), who missed nearly three months because of a right shoulder strain, makes his first start since April 8 in the series finale Sunday going into the All-Star break. The Rangers go with MacKenzie Gore (5-8, 4.72), who pitched five innings Wednesday in a loss to the Angels, in place of Jacob deGrom (left glute strain).<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) \u2014 Yordan Alvarez had another moonshot for his AL-leading 31st home run, LaMonte Wade Jr. hit his first career grand slam and the Houston Astros beat the Texas Rangers 9-3 on Saturday night. The Astros led for good after Alvarez, also the AL leader with 70 RBIs, hit a two-run homer 425 … Continue reading Alvarez hits AL-leading 31st homer, Wade has first career grand slam and Astros beat Rangers 9-3<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1523634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-07-14 05:13:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1523634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1523635,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523634\/revisions\/1523635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1523634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1523634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1523634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}