Texas Rangers 15, Los Angeles Angels 9

Rangers even up a crucial home series with offensive explosion.

ARLINGTON — The Texas Rangers evened up a crucial home series Thursday night, defeating the LA Angels 15-9 at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. The win improved Texas to 61-43, four and a half games ahead of the Oakland A's for first place in the AL West and five games ahead of the Angels. Los Angeles fell to 57-49.

Photo not provided by the LA Angels, Texas Rangers

Texas' sleeper cell performed exactly as planned Thursday night.

It was a slugfest from the beginning, with both starting pitchers performing poorly. Brand-new Rangers acquisition Ryan Dempster was awful in his first American League start since coming over from the Cubs in a trade two days ago, allowing eight runs on nine hits over four-plus innings. Dempster, who walked three while striking out six, was fortunately bailed out by a surprisingly efficient Texas bullpen, as four relievers combined to allow just one run over four-plus innings to preserve the win. Roy Oswalt pitched two scoreless innings for the win and now sits at 4-2 on the year.

Angels starter and former Ranger ace C.J. Wilson was also terrible, giving up eight runs on ten hits over five-plus innings. Unlike Dempster, however, Wilson was not saved by his bullpen, as four Angels relievers combined to allow seven runs over just two and two-thirds innings. Arlington native David Carpenter took the loss.

Several Rangers had huge days at the plate. Josh Hamilton drove in four runs with a two-run single in the second and a two-run ground-rule double in the seventh, and once again leads the majors with 88 RBI.

Ian Kinsler went 3-for-5 with a leadoff home run and four runs scored, while Nelson Cruz also hit a solo home run off Wilson in the bottom of the fourth. Michael Young went 2-for-5 with two RBI and two runs scored, while backup catcher Geovany Soto also collected two hits, drove in two, and scored twice.

Heralded Rangers prospect Mike Olt performed well in his first career MLB game, going 1-for-3 and scoring a run on Hamilton's second-inning single. He was later replaced by Mitch Moreland, who went 2-for-2 with a double, a stolen base, an RBI and a run scored. All told, Texas belted out 18 hits and five walks, and has scored 26 runs on the Angels' vaunted pitching staff over the last two games.

Texas next heads to Kansas City for a three-game road series against the 44-60 Royals.