Adolis Garcia and Marcus Semien each homered while Nathan Eovaldi capped his stellar first half with another quality start as the visiting Texas Rangers claimed the rubber match of a three-game series against the Houston Astros with a 5-1 victory on Sunday.
The Rangers completed a seasonlong 10-game road trip at 5-5 by pouncing on Astros All-Star right-hander Hunter Brown (9-4) and riding Eovaldi for 7? innings, his longest outing since a four-hit shutout of the Cincinnati Reds on April 1. Eovaldi (7-3) threw 102 pitches, 73 for strikes.
Eovaldi sidestepped trouble in the bottom of the first inning after Isaac Paredes (double) and Cam Smith (walk) reached safely to open the frame.
After Eovaldi induced a double play groundout by Jose Altuve, the Rangers’ Evan Carter ended the inning with a dazzling catch in center field.
Eovaldi faced just one batter over the minimum over the ensuing four innings. Astros shortstop Zack Short smacked a homer to left field to lead off the sixth inning, but Eovaldi responded by striking out four of the next five batters and retiring the final six he faced.
He allowed one run on five hits and one walk while striking out eight in his 10th quality start of the year.
Eovaldi improved to 3-0 with a 1.66 ERA in four starts since his return from the injured list.
Carter followed a leadoff walk from Wyatt Langford in the second with a run-scoring triple into the right-field corner. Three batters later, Ezequiel Duran dropped a double down the right-field line that scored Carter and extended the Texas lead to 2-0.
Garcia bashed his 13th home run of the season, a two-out solo shot to left, for a 3-0 lead in the third. Carter doubled and scored in the fourth when Alejandro Osuna lifted a sacrifice fly to right.
Brown allowed four runs on five hits and two walks with eight strikeouts over five innings. He surrendered 10 runs over his final two starts of the first half after giving up just seven runs in his previous seven starts combined.
Semien homered off Astros reliever Kaleb Ort in the eighth for the 250th home run of his career.
The Astros concluded the first half with a 1-5 homestand.
