ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) _ Gerald Williams led off the game with a home run and later broke a tie with a sacrifice fly as Tampa Bay beat the Texas Rangers 7-4 Friday night and extended Rick Helling's losing streak to six games.

Helling (7-7) retired 14 batters in a row after the Williams homer, but was chased from the game after the first four Devil Rays in the seventh got hits, including an RBI double by Steve Cox and an RBI single by Bobby Smith.

Felix Martinez greeted reliever Jeff Zimmerman with an RBI single that tied the game at 4-4. Williams followed with his sac fly to deep left that capped the four-run outburst.

Smith, who had three hits and is 13-for-33 (.394) in eight games since being recalled from Triple-A Durham, added a two-run homer in the eighth.

Cory Lidle (1-2) pitched six innings to win for the first time as a major league starter. In his eighth major league start, the former reliever struck out four with no walks and gave up four runs on six hits, including unconventional back-to-back home runs.

Roberto Hernandez pitched the ninth for his ninth save in 14 opportunities.

The Rangers led 4-1 in the fifth after Royce Clayton hit a two-run homer and Luis Alicea followed by becoming the first Texas player to hit an inside-the-park homer at The Ballpark in Arlington.

The rarity by Alicea caromed off an angled wall in the right-field corner and past Bubba Trammell. The ball rolled parallel to the wall along the warning track and wasn't retrieved by the right fielder until Alicea was already rounding third base.

That wasn't enough for Helling, who hasn't won since May 23 when he beat Kansas City to improve to 7-1. He gave up seven hits _ just three the first six innings _ with one strikeout and one walk.

Like Helling, Lidle settled after a shaky start. He gave up three singles in the first inning, including a run-scoring hit by Ivan Rodriguez that tied the game at 1-1, before retiring 12 straight batters.

Lidle's trouble began when Gabe Kapler singled with two outs in the fifth. Clayton, who had just 15 hits his previous 90 at-bats, then hit an 0-2 changeup for his 11th homer before Alicea hit a full-count pitch.

Rodriguez has a 27-game hitting streak against Tampa Bay, a streak that began June 2, 1998. The longest streak by an active player versus an opponent is Bobby Bonilla's 28 games in a row with a hit against Detroit. Bonilla, now with Atlanta, hasn't played against Detroit since June 18, 1997.

Notes: The Ballpark in Arlington, opened in 1994, has had two other inside-the-park homers: by Kansas City's Michael Tucker on Aug. 16, 1996, and the Yankees' Chuck Knoblauch on April 29, 1999. ... Two of Williams' three leadoff homers this season are against Texas, which has allowed five leadoff homers. ... Williams, hitless on Wednesday, has gone consecutive games without a hit only once this season. ... Alicea has a nine-game hitting streak. ... Smith is 13-for-27 (.481) at The Ballpark in his career. ... Rusty Greer has six straight multi-hit games, and is 13-for-27 in that stretch. ... Rafael Palmeiro has gone 11 games without an extra-base hit.