ARLINGTON -- Julio Rodríguez made sure on Friday that the Rangers hadn't forgotten about him a week after Seattle took three of four from Texas at T-Mobile Park.

As part of Rodríguez’s 3-for-5 evening in the Mariners' 8-2 win, he took Rangers pitcher Jack Leiter deep twice, accounting for five of the eight driven in for Seattle. It was Julio’s fourth multi-home run game in his career and the first in his 2024 campaign.

Friday was the third time in Rodríguez’s career he recorded five RBIs. The other two came on Aug. 17, 2023, at Kansas City and on July 15, 2022, also at Globe Life Field vs. the Rangers.

"I feel on time, putting good swings on the baseball and trying to make some good, solid contact,” he said. “It's been working good.”

The win helped the Mariners gain a game on the Tigers and Royals in the AL Wild Card race, as both lost their games Friday. Seattle was able to keep pace with the Twins, who won at Boston, and remains two games back of Minnesota for the final spot.

"You have to win the games you can win. Tonight, we did what we had to do, celebrated for a minute, then we regroup and we will try to do it again tomorrow," Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. "We stressed that we can't get ahead of ourselves, but this was a good one tonight and a good way to start the road trip, and we have a lot of big games ahead of us."

After the Mariners threatened in the first inning but couldn’t score with two on and one out, the Seattle offense broke through in the third. Josh Rojas took a Jacob deGrom 96 mph fastball at the bottom of the strike zone and launched it to the Rangers’ bullpen in right-center field for a solo home run.

The Mariners attempted to add another run with the speed of Victor Robles, who returned to the lineup after missing Thursday’s game with a right-hand contusion. Robles laid a bunt down for a hit, stole second and took third as Rangers catcher Jonah Heim threw a ball that skipped to center field, but Randy Arozarena’s flyout to left field ended the threat.

The Mariners were able to rack up deGrom’s pitch count to knock him out of the game after three innings and 58 pitches.

"deGrom is really good; you’ve got to give the guy his flowers,” Rodríguez said. “He just got back [and] that's his second start. He's pumping 99, throwing good sliders, [and] staying low in the zone. We have to stay within yourself with that guy with small thoughts because he's really good.”

Meanwhile, the Texas offense managed an earned run against George Kirby -- something it hadn’t done since Sept. 28, 2022 -- in the fourth, on a Nathaniel Lowe two-run single.

Seattle’s offense picked Kirby up in the fifth inning thanks to more speed by Robles, who reached on a Jonathan Ornelas error and moved J.P. Crawford to third after his leadoff single. Rodríguez's first homer then put Seattle back up 4-2.

"That was huge," Kirby said. "[There] was the leadoff double [Ezequiel] Duran had on me [and] I was like, ‘I really got to bear down here,’ and that was great. Then we scored a couple more runs after that."

Two innings later, Rodríguez took Leiter the opposite way for a two-run home run, extending the lead to 6-2.

“Julio came up huge today, a couple of huge home runs,” Kirby said.

The Mariners added two more runs on back-to-back sacrifice flies by Rojas and Robles to cap off the eight-run barrage. It was the third time this season that the Mariners scored seven or more runs against the Rangers’ pitching staff.

Kirby, who entered Friday’s contest with a career 0.92 ERA against the Rangers, ended the evening going six innings, allowing two runs on five hits and no walks and striking out four. It continued a trend where Kirby allowed two earned runs in each of his three career starts at Globe Life Field vs. the Rangers. The bullpen capped it off by securing his seventh career win in nine starts against Texas.