Mitch Garver, Dane Dunning guide Rangers past Red Sox

Mitch Garver hit a three-run home run and Dane Dunning pitched six strong innings as the visiting Texas Rangers opened a three-game series against the Boston Red Sox with a 6-2 victory Tuesday

Garver’s home run, his fourth of the season, came against Kaleb Ort and erased a 1-0 deficit in the second inning. Nathaniel Lowe and Ezequiel Duran, both of whom singled earlier in the inning, scored on the home run.

Garver reached base four times — also doubling and walking twice — and had four RBIs in the win.

Dunning (8-1) limited Boston to a run on six hits in six innings. He recorded four strikeouts and walked one. Will Smith retired the final batter with two runners on base to earn his 15th save.

Dunning began the season in the Rangers‘ bullpen but joined the starting rotation May 5 after Jacob deGrom was placed on the injured list and then had surgery to repair a torn UCL

It was a bullpen game for the Red Sox, who used six pitchers. Ort (1-2) gave up two runs on three hits in two-thirds of an inning and took the loss

The game had a one-hour, 47-minute weather delay that began with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning.

Jarren Duran, Masataka Yoshida, Justin Turner and Christian Arroyo each had two hits for Boston. Duran tripled in the first inning and gave the Red Sox a 1-0 lead when he scored on Alex Verdugo’s groundout to shortstop

After Garver’s home run made it a 3-1 game, Texas stretched its lead to 4-1 on back-to-back doubles by Garver and Robbie Grossman in the fourth. Grossman collected three hits in the victory, which ended Boston’s three-game winning streak.

Texas added two runs in the seventh. Josh Jung’s RBI double scored Marcus Semien to make it 5-1, and Garver drew a bases-loaded walk that forced in Corey Seager to extend the lead to 6-1.

The Red Sox capped the scoring in the eighth. Yoshida singled, took second on a passed ball and scored on Turner’s single

Texas had lost four of its previous five games.

–Field Level Media