ARLINGTON -- Pirates starter Luis Ortiz threw 92 pitches Monday night, and nearly all of them were just fine. Good enough to win plenty of ballgames in the big leagues, sufficient to reinforce that the 25-year-old right-hander is a promising part of the Pirates’ future, more than adequate.

Then there were the two pitches he threw to Corey Seager in a 4-3 loss to the Rangers. Those were offspeed pitches in the center square of the strike zone, middle-middle. They traveled a combined 849 feet and accounted for all the runs Ortiz surrendered in his six innings of work.

“Seager beat us today,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. “The two home runs, we didn’t execute pitches. I thought other than that, Luis threw the ball really well.”

Indeed, those two pitches overshadowed an otherwise decent outing in which Ortiz allowed five hits, walked one and struck out seven in the opener of a three-game series at Globe Life Field.

Even though the Bucs outhit the Rangers 7-5, they left seven men on base and were left with the impression that none of that mattered all that much in light of those two pitches.

Seager hit his 27th and 28th homers of the season.

“He’s one of the best players in the game and we made two flat, middle-middle breaking balls to him, and you cannot do that,” Shelton said. “I think we saw what happens when you do that. ... Especially the way he’s swinging the bat, you just can’t miss in the middle of the plate. He’s going to do damage if that is the case and he did damage tonight.”

Ortiz got to a full count with Seager in the first inning. Ortiz threw an 89.5-mph cutter right down the pipe, and Seager hammered it to right to put the Rangers ahead 1-0.

The second, and more devastating, of the homers Ortiz served to Seager was a first-pitch mistake: an 84.5-mph slider that also caught the middle of the zone. Seager hit a three-run dart that the Pirates couldn’t fully answer, although they came close in the next half-inning when Jared Triolo hit a three-run homer.

Ortiz had faced Seager three times before, striking him out twice and allowing a sacrifice fly on May 22 of last year in Pittsburgh.

“My plan against him and everybody is just attack,” Ortiz said. “Attack him from the beginning. He took me deep into the count [on the first homer], and at the end, I just tried to make a pitch, and I left it down the middle.”

After meetings four and five, the Pirates decided to intentionally walk Seager when he came up to face Ortiz again in the fifth. Ortiz had struck out the side in the fourth, but yielded a two-out double to Marcus Semien. That brought up Seager, who did not get to swing the bat against Ortiz again.

The Pirates have lost 12 of their past 14 games. Six of those losses, including Monday’s, have been one-run defeats.

“Our effort’s been good -- I think that's one thing no one can question, is our effort’s been good throughout the entire year,” Shelton said.