Shin-Soo Choo, Willie Calhoun and Elvis Andrus all homered within Tanner Roark's first 20 pitches and right-hander Lance Lynn equaled his career-best with 12 strikeouts Sunday afternoon, allowing the Texas Rangers to salvage one win in their three-game series against the host Oakland Athletics with an 8-3 triumph.
The loss, in their final home game of the season, leaves the Athletics (94-62) atop the American League wild-card standings by two games over the Tampa Bay Rays with just six left to play.
After having been held to a total of three runs and 10 hits in the first two games of the series, the Rangers (75-81) bombed Roark for four runs in the first inning, getting an immediate spark when Choo belted the first pitch of the contest for his 23rd home run.
Eight pitches later, Calhoun hit the first of his two homers to make it 2-0, before Andrus followed a walk to Nomar Mazara with a two-run shot, his 12th, to make it a four-run inning.
Calhoun's second homer, his 20th, bumped the lead to 5-0 in the third.
Roark (10-9) finished the inning, but was then pulled, having allowed five runs on six hits. He walked one and struck out one.
The Rangers added a pair of runs in the fourth on RBI singles by Choo and Danny Santana for a 7-0 advantage, before Mazara capped the team's scoring in the fifth with his 19th homer of the season.
Meanwhile, Lynn (15-11) continually pitched his way out of trouble with his 12 strikeouts, which equaled his previous best from 2012 as a St. Louis Cardinal against the Chicago White Sox and matched earlier this season for the Rangers against Houston.
The veteran pitched one out into the sixth inning, charged with two runs on seven hits. He walked one.
Jurickson Profar had an RBI double in the fourth inning, Matt Olson a run-scoring single in the fifth and Marcus Semien a run-scoring double in the ninth to account for the Oakland scoring.
Ronald Guzman collected three hits, while Choo and Calhoun had two apiece for the Rangers, who snapped a seven-game losing streak and won for just the sixth time in 19 games against the A's this season.
Profar had three hits, while Semien and Mark Canha chipped in with two apiece for the A's, who finish the regular season with six straight on the road -- two against the Los Angeles Angels and four at Seattle.
--Field Level Media
