ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — In a Detroit Tigers season that is increasingly reverting to haywire status, Kenny Rogers' outing last night fit right in.

In one of the strangest outings of his career, Rogers struck out eight — his most in a game in more than two years. But other than those eight strikeouts, he got only two other outs. He repeated that fact in amazement more than once after the game.

Rogers gave up seven runs and got knocked out in the fourth inning of his 9-3 loss to first-place Tampa Bay.

"The high strikeout total indicated my stuff was pretty good," he said. "You have to be consistent in quality of pitches. There's a very fine line between what's a good pitch and what's not a good pitch."

Rogers isn't a power pitcher, so he usually depends on control, changing speeds and getting outs on balls put in play. The many strikeouts were in a way a curse, because they required him to throw way too many pitches.

Amid a slew of full counts, Rogers threw 109 pitches in 3 1/3innings. It has been more than 10 years since a pitcher threw that many pitches in such a short outing. The last to do so was Boston's Steve Avery according to Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

Rogers needed forever to get the third out in the second, when the Rays got three consecutive run-scoring hits with two outs that produced the first four runs.

The Tigers were within 4-2 by the fourth. Rogers left in the bottom of that inning as Tampa Bay scored three times for a 7-2 lead.

"There were only a few times where I tried for strikeouts, because there were men in scoring position where they could get a run with a ground ball," Rogers said. "It was the hand I was dealt today, and it didn't work out.

"Strikeouts are the most overrated statistic in pitching."

The Tigers have lost the first two games of this three-game series with the Rays, whose defense, speed and bullpen make their title bid more realistic by the day. By raising their league-best home record to 42-16, they stayed three games in front of second-place Boston in the American League East.

The Tigers aren't climbing into the heart of the Central race with Chicago and Minnesota because they aren't winning series. They have won just two of their past nine series since they finished June by winning five straight interleague series.

The Tigers plunged back to .500. They have lost three straight since Wednesday, when Pudge Rodriguez was traded and they rallied from seven runs down to beat Cleveland.

Late-inning reliever Kyle Farnsworth, obtained for Rodriguez, hasn't had any meaningful work on his new job. In the two games since he reported to the Tigers, they've been behind in the late innings.

But Farnsworth, like all pitchers, needs work, and he pitched for the first time since the trade with the Tigers down six runs in the eighth inning Saturday. He pitched a 1-2-3 inning with one strikeout. Rogers probably wishes that's about how many he'd had.