ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Ian Seymour shrugged off the fifth pitch of the game and then dominated almost everything that followed.
Seymour pitched six innings Saturday, allowing two runs on four hits and one walk with 10 strikeouts, as the postseason-bound Tampa Bay Rays beat the Houston Astros 3-2 at Tropicana Field, the Associated Press reported. He did not factor in the decision. After Isaac Paredes' leadoff-frame solo homer, Seymour retired 16 batters in a row before Jose Altuve's sixth-inning double.
Yainer Diaz's single tied the game 2-2; Tyler Wells (5-2), Ty Johnson and Bryan Baker finished a one-hit final three innings.
Richie Palacios' two-run single in the fifth had given Tampa Bay a brief lead. Nick Madrigal's sacrifice fly in the seventh scored pinch-runner Kenny Piper with the go-ahead run after Liam Hicks doubled and Chandler Simpson moved the runner up, the AP wrote.
Baker recorded the final four outs for his majors-leading 40th save and has converted 29 consecutive opportunities, the longest active streak in the majors.
Ten strikeouts, one early scar
Seymour's line - 6 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 10 K - is the night's clearest pitching story. The Paredes homer came on the game's fifth pitch. Everything after it was mostly zeroes until Altuve and Diaz scratched across the tying run in the sixth.
Victor Mesa Jr. singled and scored in the fifth and later ended the game with a leaping catch at the right-field wall against Taylor Trammell, per the AP.
Peter Lambert (8-9) took the loss for Houston. Diaz finished with three hits and an RBI for the Astros. The Rays' attention-to-detail seventh - double, pinch-runner, productive out, sacrifice fly - fit the club that entered the night already playing for October.
