Josh Hamilton hits his 30th home run of the year in route of Twins

The Rangers picked up their third win over the Twins in the four game series tonight.  Tomorrow they will send Cliff Lee (10-7 3.45 ERA) to face off against Francisco Liriano (11-7 3.45 ERA).  The Rangers will go for the sweep in the four game series.  It has been pretty impressive to see the Rangers take 3 out of 3 games from the American League Central Leader.  Both teams are tied now with 72 wins, although the Rangers have one less loss.

In tonight’s game the Rangers sent C.J. Wilson (13-5 3.02ERA) to face off against Brian Duensing  (7-2 2.19ERA).  The Rangers took the game on a final score of 4-3 with two of those runs coming in the first inning off of Duensing.   The action started on a one out 3-2 walk to Michael Young.  Then Josh Hamilton homered on a fly ball to center field scoring Young and Hamilton to put the Twins in a 2-0 hole before the first inning ended.

Again in the third inning with one out, Young got going by singling on a 3-2 count and then advanced to second on a wild pitch by Duensing.  Duensing was able to regain his composure to get Hamilton to strike out.  Then on a 0-1 count Vladimir Guerrero singled to score Young from second base.

Guerrero sealed the door in the bottom of the six blasting his 23 homer of the year to break the tie and put the Rangers ahead at 4-3.  The Twins bullpen pitched two scoreless innings with Jon Rauch pitching the 7th and Jesse Crain pitching the 8th inning.  The Rangers used five relievers to get the last three innings.  Matt Harrison eventually got the save, which is his second save of the season.

The Rangers now hold a sizable 8.5 game lead over the Angels in the West.  I saw a report the other stating that Angels manager Mike Scioscia believed that the Angels were still legitimately in the race for the West.  I guess he doesn’t want to believe they are failing at least until they are mathematically eliminated.  Either way its going to be the Rangers representing the A.L. West