BALTIMORE -- Red Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts extended his career-best hitting streak to 24 games in Tuesday night's 6-2 win, blooping a seventh-inning single to shallow left-center field off Orioles reliever Dylan Bundy at Camden Yards.
Bogaerts' hit came in his fourth at-bat, after previously grounding out to second base and shortstop and striking out.
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As the ball landed just out of the reach of diving left fielder Nolan Reimold, Bogaerts raised his arms, reaching first base with his Major League-best 76th hit.
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"I knew I had [to get] that to live another day," said Bogaerts, who finished 1-for-5 and is batting .393/.430/.607 (42-for-107) during the streak. "I knew I hit it and it might fall in, but I didn't know how deep the left fielder was playing. So it was a lucky one, but definitely I'll take it."
Bogaerts owns the Majors' second-longest hitting streak of the season, trailing only teammate Jackie Bradley Jr., who had a 29-game hitting streak snapped Thursday.
The 23-year-old shortstop is first in the American League with a .350 batting average and has hit safely in 36 of his past 38 games (65-for-163, .399/.450/.577).
"I know each day that I got it," Bogaerts said of the streak. "I wake up, I know I have it. I come to the field, I know I have it. The first couple of at-bats, you're not trying to put pressure on yourself, but as the game goes on, third, fourth at-bat, you know you're time is running out, so you just try to focus a little bit more, put up a good at-bat and see what happens. I definitely know I have it."
Bogaerts joined Nomar Garciaparra (three times) and Johnny Pesky as the only Red Sox shortstops with hit streaks of at least 24. Garciaparra's 30-game streak in 1997 is tops in club history among shortstops.
"It's a bit of pressure, you have a lot of people pulling for you, wanting to see you get that hit," Bogaerts said. "Obviously, this is the big leagues, so it's not easy to get any hit, so you take anything like that you can -- infield hit, anything -- when you have a streak like that."
Major League Baseball announced Tuesday that Bogaerts leads all AL shortstops in the first returns of the Esurance MLB All-Star Game Ballot.