ARLINGTON, Texas - The game was tied when Brandon Nimmo stepped in. It was not tied when he finished the swing.
Nimmo doubled in the seventh inning to break a 3-3 deadlock, Ezequiel Duran followed with a two-run single, and the Texas Rangers beat the Boston Red Sox 7-3 on Wednesday night at Globe Life Field, the Associated Press reported.
ESPN's box lists Nimmo 1-for-4 with the RBI double, a run scored and a strikeout - a modest line that still carried the biggest swing of the night.
Erik Miller (4-1), Boston's third pitcher, was on the mound for the frame. Texas had already clawed back from Willson Contreras' two-run homer in the first and from a fifth-inning balk that briefly put Boston ahead 3-2. Nimmo's drive put the Rangers in front; Duran's single made it a three-run inning. From there, Nathan Eovaldi closed the door.
How Texas got to 3-3
Justin Foscue doubled on Jake Bennett's first pitch of the game and scored on Jake Burger's ground-rule double. Foscue's RBI single tied it at 2 in the fourth. Wyatt Langford singled home a run in the fifth. Corey Seager and Josh Jung - who finished 3-for-5 - kept pressure on throughout, per the ESPN batting lines that CBS Sports' box mirrors.
Gore's outing was brief and messy by strikeout standards: four innings, two hits, three runs, three walks, zero punchouts, and Contreras' 27th homer. Jakob Junis inherited the fifth and watched a balk send a runner home. The night needed an offensive answer. Nimmo supplied the first half of it.
September context
Texas improved to 76-76 and reached .500 for the first time since Aug. 24, completing a four-game winning streak. Houston's loss to Kansas City left the clubs tied atop the AL West with 10 games remaining, though the Astros own the head-to-head tiebreaker, the AP wrote.
Boston (82-70) has dropped five of seven but still holds the second American League wild-card spot by five games over Chicago.
