DETROIT -- Ian Seymour gave the Rays enough to hang around Tuesday night, but not enough to leave Comerica Park with a win.
The left-hander worked 5 2/3 innings and allowed four runs, three earned, on seven hits in Tampa Bay’s 4-1 loss to the Tigers. He struck out five, walked none and took his second defeat of the season, with rookie center fielder Max Clark’s two-run homer in the fifth inning doing the biggest damage.
Seymour entered the game with real momentum behind him. Over his previous four starts, he had posted a 2.35 ERA, and his recent stretch has featured a sharp swing-and-miss profile: 38 strikeouts and only four walks over his last five outings, spanning 28 2/3 innings.
“I was mostly frustrated with the pitch to Clark,” said Seymour (9-5) of the sweeper he left high and hittable. “That’s something I’ve been working on and I didn’t make the right pitch there in the right spot. I was frustrated with my execution and that was the difference in the game.
“Ahh, just stuff to work on.”
Before Seymour even took over, opener Casey Legumina set the tone with 2 1/3 scoreless innings, allowing one hit and striking out two. But Tampa Bay’s offense never found much of a counterpunch. The Rays managed only one run on five hits, and Detroit’s pitching kept the door shut after starter Jackson Jobe gave up one run in 4 1/3 innings.
Tampa Bay’s lone run came in the fourth, when Junior Caminero opened the inning with a single and Liam Hicks followed with the team’s only extra-base hit of the night, a double. Chandler Simpson then fouled out to third before Jonny DeLuca delivered an infield single that brought Caminero home. Cedric Mullins walked to load the bases with one out, but Richie Palacios struck out and Taylor Walls grounded out to first, ending the threat.
The fifth inning turned the game for good, and Tampa Bay’s defense helped swing it Detroit’s way. Gleyber Torres was credited with a bloop single to right on a ball DeLuca called for but couldn’t secure as Palacios was also converging.
“Calling that when I did, I had run a long way,” said DeLuca. “[But] if I call it, I’ve got to take it.”
Seymour struck out Hao-Yu Lee and appeared to be close to escaping the inning, but first baseman Jonathan Aranda committed a fielding error on a ball hit by Kevin McGonigle, which allowed Torres to score.
Kevin Cash said the homer Seymour allowed came on a pitch left in the middle of the zone, but otherwise liked what he saw from the lefty.
“They got the home run on a ball left kind of middle-middle,” said Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash. “Other than that, I thought Ian threw the ball really well. Stuff was good, efficient, finished the game for us, which was really beneficial.
“But just not our day at the plate.”
Cash also pointed to the way Seymour has been attacking hitters lately, noting the blend of pitches and the way he’s forcing hitters to react.
“He gets strikeouts because he has a four-pitch mix and is deceptive,” said Cash. “And he commands the baseball really, really well.
He’s generally putting himself in pitcher counts as opposed to hitter counts. And you’ll see [hitters] expand [their strike zones] with two strikes when he goes out of the zone.”
Pitching coach Kyle Snyder said before the game that Seymour has trimmed parts of his arsenal while adding effective ones and sharpening others, giving him more ways to work through a lineup.
“He does, yeah,” said Snyder. “He creates space in terms of what the hitters do and how they have to adjust the barrel. It’s been pretty fun to watch.”
Seymour said the results have reflected some of that work, even if the run prevention still needs to tighten up.
“It’s showing that the process of things we’ve been working on are successful in some areas,” said Seymour. “But, with the runs allowed over the last month or so, there’s still room for improvement.”
One more piece of Rays news came with a statistical change before Seymour ever threw a pitch. Chandler Simpson’s 15-game hitting streak was wiped out by an MLB scoring adjustment from the Aug. 20 game against Toronto. A hit that had been scored as a single with an advance on an error was changed to a two-base fielding error on the first baseman, ending the streak retroactively.
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