ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. _ The act of pitching on the road isn't any different for Martin Perez than when he pitches at Globe Life Park.
His routine is the same. His repertoire of pitches is the same. The left-hander continues to throw left-handed.
The results, though, make it seem as though he throws right-handed during at least some of his road starts.
His outing Sunday at Tropicana Field wasn't any different.
Perez allowed six runs in six innings, with five of them coming in a big fourth-inning rally, and the Texas Rangers could never recover in an 8-4 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays that cost them winning the three-game series.
Delino DeShields and Drew Stubbs hit home runs for the Rangers, who led 2-0 in the top of the third inning but were down 6-2 after the fourth. The loss left Perez 8-9 on the season, but 1-8 with a 6.23 ERA on the road.
"I don't know why," Perez said. "I guess I have to have the same focus and stay hungry. I don't understand why."
The Rangers have an off day Monday before opening a two-game series at Cincinnati, another last-place team. The Rays, last in the American League East, collected four of their five hits against Perez in the fourth, when the big inning did him in again.
The Rays, who capitalized on two Perez walks in the third to score their first run, opened the fourth double, single, single to forge a 2-2 tie and took the lead two batters later on a squeeze bunt by former Rangers catcher Bobby Wilson.
Logan Forsythe was next, and he connected for a three-run homer that just got over the right-field wall and dealt the Rangers a devastating blow.
"It's a challenge to recover from a five-run inning," manager Jeff Banister said. "It was the same pattern we've seen. I don't know if things speed up on him, but he couldn't get the mix right for him."
Perez insisted that he never panicked in the fourth or felt rushed to execute a pitch to get him off the field. He couldn't believe Corey Dickerson's RBI single that tied the score on a 1-2 fastball that was inside and head-high, but Perez recovered to get the next batter.
He believes that the Rays hit some decent pitches, not that he came unglued.
"I felt good," Perez said. "I felt like I made my pitches. I was trying to do my best, and I didn't get the result I wanted."
DeShields gave the Rangers the lead with a two-run homer off left-hander Drew Smyly, who improved to 3-0 with a 2.79 ERA over his past four starts. Stubbs connected with two outs in the fifth, and Mitch Moreland's blooper in the seventh fell in for an RBI pinch-hit single that cut the Rangers' deficit to 6-4.
Pinch hitter Nomar Mazara was next as the tying run but struck out with runners at the corners. In the eighth, Adrian Beltre and Rougned Odor couldn't get Ian Desmond home from second.
The Rays then put the game away in their half of the eighth as Steven Souza Jr. connected for a two-run homer off closer Sam Dyson, who was working for the first time since Tuesday.
"I felt like we had a decent approach against Smyly, but he never really threw too many in the heart of the zone," Banister said. "But it was a case when we didn't get a big hit to really get us back to give us a real threat."
Perez's continued road woes didn't help. He wasn't the only one without an explanation for them. He's 7-1 with a 2.36 ERA at home.
"I don't think there's anything you can put you're finger on other than he hasn't performed as well on the road as he has at home," Banister said. "It's not that he's in a different routine or anything like that. It just seems to be the one inning that typically gets him."
