NEW YORK \u2014 Cody Bellinger hit a go-ahead double with the bases loaded in the seventh inning and the New York Yankees pulled away for a 9-3 victory over the Houston Astros on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
Bellinger snapped a 3-all tie when he drove a 1-1 fastball from Bennett Sousa (1-3) off the top of the center-field fence to score Trent Grisham and Ben Rice. The clutch swing came after Luis Garc\u00eda Jr. reached on an infield single when Sousa didn\u2019t cover first base in time on a grounder to the right side.<\/p>\n
Spencer Jones added an RBI single in the seventh and Jazz Chisholm Jr. had a run-scoring double. Chisholm singled twice and finished with his third three-hit game this season.<\/p>\n
Rice launched his 35th homer in the first inning and Garc\u00eda tacked on a two-run shot in the eighth. Garc\u00eda had three more hits after going 4 for 5 in\u00a0Tuesday night\u2019s defeat.<\/p>\n
Rice\u2019s homer pulled him within one of Houston slugger Yordan Alvarez for the American League lead and marked the first time in 24 games the Yankees scored in an opening inning.<\/p>\n
New York (75-57) won for the 11th time in 17 games and remained 3 1\/2 games behind first-place Tampa Bay in the AL East and 2 1\/2 ahead of Boston for the league\u2019s top wild card.<\/p>\n
Yankees rookie Elmer Rodr\u00edguez allowed three runs and three hits over six-plus innings in his first major league start since June 21.<\/p>\n
The right-hander was lifted after walking Jose Altuve, and the Astros tied it against Paul Blackburn when Christian Walker\u2019s grounder caromed off George Lombard Jr.\u2019s glove for the rookie shortstop\u2019s sixth error in 19 career games.<\/p>\n
Blackburn (6-2) struck out Jeremy Pe\u00f1a with the bases loaded to keep it tied. Michael Fulmer struck out Alvarez to start a 1-2-3 eighth in\u00a0his Yankees debut.<\/p>\n
Altuve had an RBI double and Daulton Varsho homered off Rodr\u00edguez as the Astros (66-67) lost for the 10th time in 16 games. Alvarez singled in the sixth and ended the night with a major league-best .322 batting average.<\/p>\n
Houston starter Peter Lambert allowed three runs \u2014 two earned \u2014 and seven hits in 5 2\/3 innings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Cody Bellinger hit a go-ahead double with the bases loaded in the seventh inning and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":789780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2389],"tags":[42,5,139,54,3211,4,185,10665],"class_list":["post-789779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston-astros","tag-astros","tag-baseball","tag-houston","tag-houston-astros","tag-houstonastros","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-trt"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117167672727456916","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}