ST. PETERSBURG — The Tampa Bay Rays came two outs from throwing a no-hitter using an opener — the pitching strategy they pioneered — while Junior Caminero slugged three home runs in a 13-2 rout of the Kansas City Royals at Tropicana Field on Thursday afternoon.
Reliever Casey Legumina started the game and threw 1 1/3 perfect frames before handing the ball to lefty Ian Seymour, who carried the no-hit bid through 6 2/3 innings with seven strikeouts and one walk. Craig Kimbrel entered in the ninth to finish it off but surrendered a homer to Jensen after walking Starling Marte, ending the bid with two outs remaining.
“I hate that I wasn’t able to close it out,” Kimbrel said. “It was an unbelievable job by Seymour. Sometimes, you want to see a guy keep going [and pitch the ninth inning], but to see him go out there and do that, it was pretty awesome.”
Seymour (4-1) finished at 90 pitches, 67 of them strikes. Manager Kevin Cash said he never considered sending Seymour out for the ninth. “We talked about, ideally, if we could get [Seymour] at 80 to 90 pitches, that’s getting to the point where he’s built up, ready to go as a starter, and he certainly did that,” Cash said. “The efficiency is what allowed it to happen.” Cash noted that a month ago Seymour was a one- or two-inning reliever throwing roughly 30 pitches per outing.
Seymour became the third MLB pitcher since 1980 to throw at least 6 2/3 innings of hitless relief, joining Felix Pena (July 12, 2019, against the Mariners) and Jake Westbrook (April 19, 2004, against the Tigers). “When you control the count and throw in the strike zone — good things happen,” Seymour said. “It would’ve been cool [to pitch the ninth] at the end of the day. I probably would’ve been disappointed if I had started it, but I came in for a bulk appearance. I trust [the Rays’ staff] to always put my best interest forward. If I hadn’t walked [Marte], it would’ve been a little bit of a different situation.”
Royals manager Matt Quatraro credited Seymour’s deception. “The ball gets on you pretty quickly. He did a good job of mixing and kept us off the barrel. I think when we were looking soft, he went hard and vice versa. He pitched exceptionally well,” Quatraro said.
Caminero provided the offensive fireworks in his first career three-homer game — a two-run home run in the bottom of the first, a solo shot in the fifth and a three-run blast off shortstop Tyler Tolbert, who was pitching, in the eighth inning. The combination made the Rays the second team in at least the expansion era (since 1961) to produce an eight-plus inning no-hit bid and an individual three-homer game in the same contest. The only other instance was Cincinnati on June 27, 2025, when Nick Martinez took a no-hitter into the ninth alongside Spencer Steer’s three-homer day. There has never been a completed no-hitter paired with an individual three-homer game, and there have never been a combined perfect game among the 24 perfect games in MLB history.
The victory clinched a split of the four-game series for Tampa Bay, which continues its homestand at Tropicana Field this weekend.