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
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
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
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
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
After Randy Arozarena’s tying homer in the second, Pederson hit a three-run shot in the bottom of the inning. Pederson’s 19th homer, his 13th hit in a span of 29 at-bats, landed in the first row of seats just beyond the wall in right.<\/p>\n
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
It was the third time in Kirby’s 132 starts over five seasons that he allowed four homers in a game. He struck out three without a walk in four innings.
\nUp next<\/p>\n
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>\n
AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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. All … Continue reading Joc Pederson hits first 2 of Rangers’ 4 homers in 7-3 win over Mariners to take key AL West series<\/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-1528285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-07-30 03:41:59","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\/1528285","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=1528285"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1528287,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528285\/revisions\/1528287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1528285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1528285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1528285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}