St. Petersburg, Fla. — Once they had stretched their near-record homer string to 13 games, courtesy of birthday boy Miguel Cabrera’s 451-foot blast in the first inning, the Tigers might have thought more April merriment was bubbling Tuesday night at Tropicana Field.
Not quite.
Cabrera’s blast was it. Although they fired three more rockets at the warning track, all for putouts, nothing in the way of a scoring ruckus ensued as the Tigers lost, 5-1, to the Rays on a night when manager Brad Ausmus’ guys collected all of four hits.
“We really didn’t swing the bats badly,” Ausmus said after the Tigers had seen their two-week record slip to 8-5.