With Burkett’s Help, Rangers Stop Seattle

The Texas Rangers aren’t ready to drop out of AL West race quite yet.

Faced with the prospect of being swept in a four-game series by Seattle for the second time in less than a month, the Rangers got eight strong innings from John Burkett in a 9-2 victory Saturday over the Mariners.

The Rangers ended a six-game losing streak to Seattle that included the first two games of this series.

A loss would have dropped Texas eight games behind the first-place Mariners. Instead, the Rangers are six back. The second-place Angels also won Saturday to move to within 3 1/2 games of the lead.

“It was a big one,” Texas Manager Johnny Oates said. “We’ve talked the last couple of weeks about when you’re the team chasing the team you’re playing, every game you play is big. And as the season goes on, you’ve got fewer games to play.”

Burkett (7-7) yielded one run and six hits to stop the Mariners, who scored 20 runs in the first two games of the series. He walked one and struck out seven.

A crowd of 53,929 watched the Rangers take a 3-0 lead in the first inning on a RBI double by Will Clark followed by Dean Palmer’s two-run double. In the fifth, Domingo Cedeno had a run-scoring single to give Texas a 4-1 lead.