DETROIT _ Less than two weeks ago, Buck Farmer looked like the answer for the Detroit Tigers' pitching staff.
After Sunday, he may not even be on the staff.
The two scoreless starts (13 combined innings) from late May and early June are a distant memory. Farmer was rocked for the second straight game Sunday, the primary culprit in the Tigers' 9-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays, dropping the last two games to split the four-game series.
Farmer threw 61 pitches but they all came in the first 2 1/3 innings, three of which left the yard for home runs, including his final pitch, sent to left-center for Steven Souza Jr.'s third-inning grand slam.
When it ends that quickly and that ugly with seven earned runs and only six outs, sometimes it can be written off to a bad day.
But on the heels of a nearly identical outing June 13 against Arizona (2 1/3 inning, six earned, two home runs), his Tigers tenure may not be long.
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Tigers pitching coach Rich Dubee visited the mound but it didn't matter. Souza then ended Farmer's day.
Not that the Tigers gave him much support.
They scratched out a run in the second, closing the gap to 2-1, but vanished after that as Jacob Faria got comfortable.
He retired the next nine Tigers and didn't allow another run, leaving with a standout seven innings, striking out nine and allowing only the one run.
Inheriting a 7-1 hole, Tigers reliever Chad Bell followed his recent success. He was strong for the next four innings, keeping the Rays scoreless. But, as with Farmer, when it went bad, it went really bad, as he allowed consecutive homers on consecutive pitches in the seventh, digging the hole deeper at 9-1.
The five homers are the most the Tigers have allowed since giving up five vs. Texas on May 7, 2016.
The Tigers' impressive early defense was wasted. In the second, shortstop Dixon Machado leaned over the third-base railing to snag a foul from Colby Rasmus, and charged a grounder to throw out Tim Beckham at first base.
In the third, Miguel Cabrera dove to snag a hot liner down the first-base line to prevent the brutal five-run inning from getting worse. Cabrera also ended the fourth reaching for another grounder and running/sliding into first for the out.
