Red Sox Rout Rangers
By Anthony Andro, The Sports Xchange
ARLINGTON, Texas — The Boston Red Sox have been getting hits from everyone in their lineup during their six-game winning streak.
On Tuesday night, Andrew Benintendi wanted the spotlight all for himself.
The left fielder went 5-for-5 with two homers and a career-high six RBIs as the Red Sox pounded the Texas Rangers 11-4.
Benintendi led a Boston offense that pounded out 19 hits, giving it double figures in hits in all six wins in the streak. The offense also backed the best pitching performance of the season by left-hander David Price (4-2), who threw six scoreless innings and struck out nine.
The Rangers (40-44) have lost six of their past seven games and are four games under .500 for the first time since June 9.
Boston (49-35) jumped on Texas starter Yu Darvish (6-7) for a pair of runs in the second inning to get things going. Benintendi began his big night with an RBI single. Tzu-Wei Lin’s single made it 2-0 with his first career RBI.
The Red Sox added two more runs in the fourth on back-to-back RBI singles from Christian Vazquez and Lin.
Boston knocked out Darvish in the fifth as Benintendi lined a three-run homer to right for his third hit, putting the Red Sox up 7-0.
“I just try to go up there with a good approach and just hit the ball hard, and after the first one kind of squibbed through, baseball kind of works like that sometimes and kind of gets you going,” Benintendi said. “It felt like guys were on in front of me every at-bat.”
Darvish had his shortest outing of the season, pitching 4 1/3 innings and allowing seven runs (all earned) on 11 hits. The earned runs and hits allowed matched his career highs.
“All the bloopers and then all the ground balls that I thought I’d get an out found a hole and that became a hit,” Darvish said. “I think momentum went their way when that happened. If you look at the hitters, I didn’t see many big differences from their lineup. It’s just those hits I gave up weren’t hard hits. They just found a hole. I feel like I didn’t get any luck today.”
Texas manager Jeff Banister said of the All-Star pitcher, “There are times when guys go out there and they’re not as sharp as they want to be. Tonight was one of those nights for Yu. I feel confident he’ll be able to bounce back and be ready to go.”
Price had no such problems. He allowed two hits in the first inning but got out of trouble by striking out Carlos Gomez with runners on second and third. He allowed just four singles over the next four innings and now has quality starts in three consecutive outings.
“The offense swung the bats extremely well again,” Price said. “Some really good defensive plays, and whenever you get that type of lead early on in a game, you want to hold it right there, and that’s what I was able to do,” Price said. “(The Gomez at-bat) was big. At least my last two starts, I’ve given up a run in the first inning, and that’s not what you want to do, especially against a guy like Yu Darvish, and to be able to make pitches right there, that was big.”
Benintendi added an RBI single in the sixth inning and then led off the eighth with his second homer of the game. Jackie Bradley Jr. followed with a solo homer to make it 11-0.
Benintendi, who has two five-hit games this season, led the way for a Boston team that had six players with multiple hits. Vazquez, Bradley and Lin each had three hits, while Mitch Moreland and Hanley Ramirez had two apiece. Benintendi scored four times while Moreland, Bradley and Ramirez each scored twice.
Adrian Beltre went 3-for-5 for Texas. The Rangers avoided a shutout with Mike Napoli’s three-run homer in the eighth inning. He has homered in each of the last four games.
Delino DeShields also homered for Texas in the ninth.
