On Wednesday night, the Oakland Athletics went ahead two games to one in their four-game series against the Texas Rangers with a dominating 9-3 victory. More importantly, they helped strengthen their standing in both the Wild Card race and the American League West. With the win, the A's moved to just three games behind the Rangers in the division -- with four more games left to play against Texas before the season is over.
The A's put a huge hurt on Texas right away, as they tagged starter Martin Perez for five runs in the top of the first and knocked him out of the game after just two-thirds of an inning. Yoenis Cespedes drove in Stephen Drew with a triple to get the scoring started and came in to score himself on a Chris Carter single. Josh Donaldson drove in a pair of runs with a single and scored on another triple -- this time by Derek Norris. Before the Rangers even came up to bat, Oakland was ahead 5-0.
Elvis Andrus hit an RBI double in the bottom of the first inning to get one of those runs back for the Rangers and picked up another two runs in the second to cut the lead to 5-3. Oakland answered back in the top of the third, as Drew drove in another pair of runs with an RBI single to make it 7-3. In the top of the fourth, Norris added another RBI single. Jarrod Parker and the Oakland bullpen held the Rangers to just those three runs for the remainder of the game. Norris takced on one last run for the A's with a sacrifice fly in the ninth inning. Norris was 2-for-4 with three RBI and Drew was 4-for-5 with two runs driven in from the leadoff spot.
The A's will try to move to two games back and capture the series on Thursday.