Vargas earns 12th victory as Royals trounce Twins

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Jason Vargas picked up his American League-leading 12th victory, Eric Hosmer hit a three-run homer and the Kansas City Royals defeated the Minnesota Twins 8-1 on Friday night.

Vargas (12-3) tied Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers for the major league lead in wins and lowered his ERA to 2.22, which tops the American League. He allowed two hits and one run over seven innings, while walking a season-high four.

Ervin Santana (10-5) took the loss, yielding seven runs, five earned, and eight hits.

It was the second time since 1990 that two pitchers with at least 10 wins and an ERA of less than 3.00 matched up. The previous was June 16, 2002, with Boston's Derek Lowe (10 wins, 1.89 ERA) and Atlanta's Tom Glavine (11 wins, 1.53 ERA) squared off in an interleague game.

Santana's throwing error in the fourth opened the floodgates for a five-run inning. After Jorge Bonifacio opened the inning with a single, Lorenzo Cain hit a sharp grounder to Santana for a probable double play. Santana's throw sailed wide right of second baseman Brian Dozier and into center field.

Hosmer deposited Santana's first pitch into the left-field seats, tucking it just inside the foul pole, for his 10th home run.

The Royals sent 10 men to the plate in the inning with Whit Merrifield and Alcides Escobar adding run-scoring singles.

Mike Moustakas blasted his 21st home run to lead off the Kansas City sixth. Escobar tripled and scored on Alex Gordon's sacrifice fly for the other Royals' run in the inning. Gordon had another sacrifice fly in the eighth.

Miguel Sano's two-out single in the third scored Max Kepler, who had walked, for the only run Vargas would allow. YANKEES 13, ASTROS 4 Brett Gardner tied a career-high with six RBIs and his seventh-inning grand slam helped the New York Yankees cruise to a 13-4 victory over the Houston

Astros. The Yankees started off slow, and trailed by two entering the sixth inning, after arriving at their hotel in Houston about 6 a.m. following an almost three-hour rain delay before the start of their game against the White Sox on Thursday night.

WHITE SOX 8, RANGERS 7 Melky Cabrera hit a two-run double against closer Matt Bush to cap a three-run ninth inning and give the Chicago White Sox a victory over the Texas Rangers. Todd Frazier hit two homers. Jose Abreu finally connected at home after setting a club record by hitting his first 13 on the road, and Chicago rallied for its fourth win in 12 games.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

CARDINALS 8, NATIONALS 1 Mike Leake pitched eight strong innings and Yadier Molina drove in four runs to help the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Washington Nationals. The Cardinals have won five of their past six, while the Nationals have dropped four of six.