ARLINGTON -- Rougned Odor’s fourth-inning home run clanked off the right-field foul pole, winning ticket-buying fans at Globe Life Park a chicken sandwich. It was barely fair, but it was no consolation for Tigers left-hander Tyler Alexander, who cursed himself for hanging a curveball over the middle of the plate.

He had a lot of pitches like that, in a ballpark where he didn’t want to have them.

“I didn’t really have … anything, really,” Alexander said after the Tigers’ 5-4 loss to the Rangers, pausing for evaluation.

This is not how Alexander envisioned his homecoming going. He grew up in nearby Southlake, Texas, before staying home to play college ball at Texas Christian University. He went to Rangers games as a kid as the club rose to prominence behind Nelson Cruz, Ian Kinsler and Josh Hamilton. He was a fan in the stands at one of the World Series games in 2011, when the Rangers lost a heartbreaker to the Cardinals. He even played a scrimmage here as a freshman in high school.

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Alexander’s fourth Major League start was essentially in his backyard, with more family and friends in attendance than he could count. But the comforts of home only go so far.

“I mean, I had [my] fastball a little bit,” Alexander said, “but I left it over the plate. I could not get the ball down for the life of me. The balls they hit were just bad pitches.”

Still, despite a half-dozen balls in play off him with exit velocities of 100-plus mph, including Odor’s 101.8-mph drive off the foul pole, Alexander battled. So did the team behind him, turning what had the makings of another lopsided loss into a comeback.

By the time Rangers closer Jose Leclerc finished off the Tigers with a Jeimer Candelario groundout, they had the potential tying run on third base. It was the kind of late rally rarely seen from a club that stands 0-65 when trailing after eight innings, and just 2-59 when trailing after the sixth.

Between Friday’s near-comeback and Wednesday’s win in Anaheim, any fear of a freefall in team morale in the wake of the Nicholas Castellanos and Shane Greene trades seem to have abated. In their place is what essentially amounts to a late-season tryout for many of the players still around and others on the way.

“We’ve got new guys, and we’re trying to give them a chance here,” manager Ron Gardenhire said. “These guys know that they’re going to get opportunities. Everybody in that dugout is going to get opportunities. That’s kind of where we are right now. It’s not over with. We’re going to do more, I’m sure, bring more people up here. We’ve got kids down there that have been at Triple-A for a while, and we’re going to make some more moves. But these guys are showing life out there.

“We won a series last time [in Anaheim]. We had a chance to win this first ballgame. That’s what you ask for, and we’ll come back and see if we can win one tomorrow.”

Alexander (0-2) finished with four runs on 10 hits over 5 2/3 innings, walking none and striking out four. The Rangers scored in four of the first five innings as he searched for workable pitches, but Texas plated single runs each time. His strikeout of Jeff Mathis and a deft play from second baseman Niko Goodrum stranded two runners in the fourth. An inning later, he overcame a leadoff triple and double by retiring the middle of the Rangers' lineup, punctuated by an elevated offspeed pitch past Odor.

“What I like about him is he hangs in there," Gardenhire said. "He never gives up the big inning. It’s one here, one there. He pitched up today, and I don’t think that’s his strong point. But never had a big, bad inning against him. He’s doing fine. He’s competing.”

Gardenhire can live with that. He got it out of his offense eventually once Lance Lynn finished his seven innings of one-run ball.

Miguel Cabrera, who struck out swinging all three times he faced Lynn, hit an 0-2 pitch from Jesse Chavez up the middle for an RBI single in the eighth. Victor Reyes eventually stepped to the plate as the potential tying run that inning before grounding out.

Travis Demeritte’s second walk of the day in his Major League debut, two days after his trade from the Braves in the Greene deal, sparked the rally off Leclerc in the ninth. Another walk, two singles and a run-scoring wild pitch continued it. Brandon Dixon checked his swing on back-to-back two-strike pitches, both holding up on appeal to first base, before his walk continued the inning.

Candelario’s game-ending groundout was the hardest-hit ball of the inning.

“We didn’t get many hits,” Gardenhire said, “but we stayed after the game at the end, put pressure on the closer. That was pretty fun to watch. Unfortunately, we didn’t get one more big hit.”