ARLINGTON -- The Mariners got a solid start from veteran fill-in Tommy Milone and the first career hit by rookie second baseman Shed Long, but they didn’t get a much-needed victory against the rival Rangers, as their troubles continued in Texas with a 5-3 loss on Tuesday at Globe Life Park.

Seattle is off to an 0-2 start on a six-game road trip, and it has lost 17 of its last 22 to fall to last place in the American League West, at 23-28.

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It’s been a precipitous drop from the 13-2 start that had the Mariners with the best record in baseball out of the gate, but much has changed since then, including a roster that has already featured an MLB-high 43 players just two months into the season.

One of the latest newcomers was Milone, making his first Major League start since last August with the Nationals. The 32-year-old took the loss despite allowing just three hits and two runs over five innings.

Milone, promoted from Triple-A Tacoma to take the place of struggling rookie Erik Swanson, needed 54 pitches to get through the first two innings while allowing one run. But he wound up getting through five frames on 89 pitches before turning a 2-0 deficit over to Seattle’s revamped bullpen.

Milone walked the second batter he faced, Willie Calhoun, in a 12-pitch duel, then needed 11 pitches to get Hunter Pence to pop up in a 31-pitch first.

“They were fouling off a lot of pitches and I didn’t want to give in,” Milone said. “Obviously, up here, they’re a lot better hitters and they find a way to spoil the good pitches you throw. I settled down after that and started hitting the corners and changing speeds.”

Milone has pitched in 152 Major League games, with 131 starts, over nine seasons, now with six different clubs, and he showed that veteran presence once he settled in.

“I was more excited than anything,” he said. “It was just a lot of fun to get back out there and be up here.”

While Milone was just added to the roster Tuesday afternoon, he’s hardly the only new face in the Mariners clubhouse. Four of Seattle’s eight relievers have arrived in just the past eight days. Recent trade acquisition Austin Adams gave up one run in the sixth before the Rangers all but clinched victory when Joey Gallo laced a two-run homer off Roenis Elias in the eighth.

Gallo’s shot -- his 15th of the season -- was a 110.1-mph line drive that had just enough height to clear the fence in right field, at a projected 352 feet, per Statcast.

“For sure I thought it wasn’t going,” said Mariners catcher Omar Narvaez. “But we’re talking about Gallo. He is strong enough. We all know he has a lot of power.”

Lance Lynn shut out Seattle until the seventh, when Narvaez just missed a game-tying three-run homer, settling instead for an RBI single high off the right-field wall. Jay Bruce followed with a sacrifice fly to cut the Rangers’ lead to 3-2.

Narvaez cleared the wall in the ninth with a solo shot, his eighth homer of the season, but it was too little, too late for Seattle as it fell to 2-4 on the season against the Rangers. Narvaez finished 3-for-4 to hike his season average to .301.

Long gets on the board

Long didn’t get any sleep Monday night, landing in Seattle with his Triple-A Tacoma team from Reno at 1:30 a.m. PT and having to catch a flight to Texas at 6 a.m. But he wasn’t worried about that when pushing a single up the middle off Lynn in the sixth for his first MLB hit.

Long had gone 0-for-10 to start his career -- 0-for-9 in three games last week and then a lineout to short in his first at-bat Tuesday after being called back up when Dee Gordon went on the 10-day injured list with a bruised right wrist.

“Relief,” Long said. “Relief, for sure. It’s a blessing. It definitely felt good to go out and get the first one out of the way. It means a lot. It’s all anyone has been talking about, ‘C’mon, man, I know you can do it.’ So it definitely feels good to just do it.”

Long said he’ll send the ball home to his parents with the batting gloves he used for that at-bat.

“I’ll remember that one my whole life,” he said. “And now I can get in the box and just hit and not think about it.”