Saturday, 3 a.m.
The division lead is in doubt.
The bats have disappeared.
The team cannot win a one-run game.
But forget all of that for a moment. For the time being, the Rays' immediate future is somewhere inside of Tyler Glasnow's left arm.
Glasnow left the game abruptly Friday night after 5 1/3 innings after feeling arm tightness. He would lose to the Yankees, 4-3, for his first loss of the season. But for now, it is Glasnow's future that concerns the Rays.
The Rays' lead in the AL East has dwindled to one-half game, largely because the Rays are 1-7 in one-run games. In the last two games, the Rays have struck out 34 times in 22 innings and are batting .083 with 12 strikeouts with runners in scoring position.
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Glasnow entered Friday's game with a 6-0 record and league-leading 1.47 era. It was the starting threesome of Blake Snell, Charlie Morton and Glasnow that gave fans a reason to think the Rays might be in this race for a while yet.
"He went to stretch his forearm, which is not an ideal thing," manager Kevin Cash said. "I’m glad we caught it. We’ll wait and see what people a lot smarter than us tell us."
Glasnow, after the game, said he did not feel discomfort.
I feel fine, honestly," Glasnow said. "I don’t really feel it. I threw like six pitches to end the inning and all of them I felt a little tightness in there. I thought I would shut it down with a precautionary reason.
“I think as a pitcher you always have certain things that go on. There are always small pains and stuff. I don’t really know what’s going on right now, but I felt good and I’m going to be optimistic. It wasn’t a pop or anything crazy. I felt tightness for a couple of pitches and I felt like I should come out of the game
because it felt pretty tight. I’ll figure it out later.”
The Rays fell behind 2-0 in the first inning. They later rallied for 3-2 lead, but Gio Urshela had a two-run single in the sixth.
The Rays loaded the bases with nobody out in the seventh, but Tommy Pham struck out on a full count and Ji-Man Choi hit into a double play.
"There were a couple of missed opportunities in there," Cash said. "Credit (Adam) Ottavino for making some pitches. He kind of put himself in a bind by not finding the strike zone and we had good at-bats and then he really battled with Tommy and got a big strikeout and the ground ball from Ji-Man. That was frustrating because we felt like we had him on the ropes there a little bit. Bases-loaded and no outs. We couldn’t come up with the big separator there.”
For the Rays, Austin Meadows returned to the lineup and had a double and a home run. Choi, also, homered for the Rays.
The Rays play against the Yankees again tonight at 6:10 p.m. Ryan Stanek will open for Tampa Bay. He'll face C.C. Sabathia.
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