Luis Robert Jr. drove in a run and scored another and Sean Burke allowed just one run in six innings as the Chicago White Sox defeated the slumping Texas Rangers 4-1 on Friday in the opener of a three-game set.
Burke (3-5) scattered three hits, walked three and struck out six as the White Sox won for only the second time in their past eight games. Cam Booser and Jordan Leasure each retired the side in order in the seventh and eighth innings, respectively, before Steven Wilson pitched the ninth to earn his first save of the season.
The White Sox outhit Texas 8-3, with Chase Meidroth and Lenyn Sosa collecting two hits each for Chicago.
The Rangers’ Tyler Mahle (5-2) allowed three runs on five hits and three walks over five innings and had his team-record streak of starts allowing two runs or less to begin a season snapped at 10 games. He struck out three in the setback, his first since May 1.
Texas has dropped a season-high five straight games. The Rangers have now scored one run or less in 13 of their 27 losses.
The White Sox scored three runs in the third off Mahle, which was more than he had surrendered of an entire game in his first 10 starts of the season. Sosa and Josh Rojas singled to start the frame and moved up on a walk to Mike Tauchman. Sosa scored when Mahle walked Miguel Vargas and Andrew Benintendi followed with a sacrifice fly that plated Rojas and made it 2-0.
Robert Jr. then singled to short center field but the hit was deep enough to allow Tauchman to scamper home with the third run of the inning.
Texas finally got on the board in the sixth, when Jake Burger’s two-out double brought home Wyatt Langford. Josh Jung also tried to score from first on the hit but was nailed at the plate by Sosa’s throw from the hole.
That run snapped a 16-inning scoreless stretch for the Rangers that stretched back to the seventh inning of a 4-3 loss to the Yankees in New York on Wednesday.
