Wednesday, 4 a.m.
Ryan Yarbrough dropped the ball.
Pretty much, that tells you everything you need to know about the Rays' game on Tuesday night.
Yarbrough dropped the ball, literally and figuratively, in an 8-3 loss to the Texas Rangers. The defeat lowered the Rays' record to 5-6 on the season.
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Perhaps as big a concern is that it was Yarbrough's second straight unimpressive start. Against the Rangers, he went six innings and gave up nine hits and six runs. In his previous start against Boston, he had given up nine runs (six earned) and nine hits.
In a way, it was a sign of things to come when, in the first inning, Yarbrough dropped the ball while on the mound for a balk to set up the Rangers' first run.
“I’ve never seen that on a baseball field where a pitcher dropped the ball to advance a runner," said Rays' manager Kevin Cash.
Yarbrough agreed. "The weird balk thing ... I’ve never had that happen before and I've never seen it on a baseball field. It was one of those weird things. I tried to bring it behind my back and it got wedged out of my hands."
Yarbrough ran into trouble whenever the ball left his hand Tuesday night. He gave up three hits in four batters to start the game, and in the fourth, he gave up four straight hits (and five hits in six batter) to lead to his demise.
"The fourth inning where you have three straight singles and nothing was hit really hard," Yarbrough said. "Then didn’t execute a pitch to (Nick) Solak. That’s been what’s happened the last two outings, that one inning where everything just piles up. That’s really frustrating."
Cash sounded frustrated, too.
"It got sloppy," he said. "We got outplayed at the end of it. Overall, it kind of frustrating. We didn’t have our best showing tonight."
The Rays play the Rangers again tonight at 7:10 p.m. at Tropicana Field. The Rangers will start Kohei Arihara. The Rays did not announce their starter, but Cash said the team will activate Josh Fleming from the taxi squad and he will probably be used in some capacity.