Texas Rangers 5, Cleveland Indians 2

Texas cruises to their second straight home win.

ARLINGTON — The Texas Rangers cruises to a relatively easy victory Wednesday night, defeating the Cleveland Indians 5-2 at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. The win improved Texas to 85-57, three and a half games ahead of the surging Oakland A's for first place in the AL West. Cleveland fell to 59-84.

Photo not provided by the Cleveland Indians

Cleveland failed to come up big in the late innings.

Rangers starter Ryan Dempster was excellent, allowing just two runs on seven hits over seven innings for his fifth straight win. Dempster, who walked just one while striking out eight, improved to 6-1 with the Rangers and lowered his ERA to 4.11. Closer Joe Nathan struck out two in a scoreless ninth for his 31st consecutive save.

Indians starter Jeanmar Gomez was not so fortunate, giving up five runs over just four innings to fall to 5-8 on the year.

Texas opened the scoring with a big first inning. Ian Kinsler led off with a double, then advanced to third on Elvis Andrus' single before scoring on Josh Hamilton's fielder's choice groundout to make it 1-0. Adrian Beltre then followed with a two-run home run to deep left field, his 32nd of the year, to make it 3-0 and provide the Rangers all the runs they would need. Beltre did leave the game later after a stellar defensive play, and was replaced by rookie phenom Mike Olt, who went 1-for-2 with a strikeout.

Texas went up 4-0 in the bottom of the third when Hamilton hit a solo home run, his major league-leading 41st of the season, to deep right field. Hamilton also leads the majors with 121 RBI.

The teams traded runs in the fourth, with Cleveland's Carlos Santana scoring on a fielder's choice groundout to break Dempster's shutout, and Texas' Geovany Soto driving in Michael Young with a sacrifice fly in the bottom frame to make it 5-1.

Carlos Santana drove in another run in the top of the fifth on a sacrifice fly to cap the scoring, but Dempster and the Rangers bullpen retired the final 13 Indians to preserve the win.