Rays' quiet bats can’t pick up Yarbrough 

After hitting the home run that turned Tyler Glasnow’s 14-strikeout gem into a win Monday night at Tropicana Field, Rays shortstop Willy Adames joked that “hits were expensive tonight.”

They came a little more freely on Tuesday night. Unfortunately for the Rays, it was the Rangers who cashed in.

Left-hander Ryan Yarbrough gave up six runs on a career high-tying 10 hits in six innings, and Tampa Bay’s bats went quiet after scoring twice in the first inning as the Rays lost, 8-3, to the Rangers. Texas piled on 13 hits, an offensive attack punctuated by Charlie Culberson’s eighth-inning homer off reliever Trevor Richards, while starter Kyle Gibson allowed only four hits and two walks in his seven innings of work.

The Rangers took advantage of seemingly every opportunity they had Tuesday night, going 6-for-13 with runners in scoring position. By comparison, the Rays have just three hits in their last 32 at-bats with runners in scoring position.

“We've just got to do a better job of capitalizing. Right now, the runs are becoming tough to come by,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “You're going to go through parts of your season like that. But when we do get some guys on base, we've got to somehow make the most of it and start driving some guys in.”

Yarbrough had an unusual night -- his second straight outing being charged with six earned runs. And the Rays gave up at least eight runs for the fifth time in 11 games this season, an uncharacteristic start to the season for a team built on pitching and defense.

Yarbrough worked perfect innings in the second, third and fifth, recording five of his six strikeouts in those frames. But the Rangers managed to string together a few rallies against the soft contact-inducing lefty, each one frustrating in its own way.

In the first, Yarbrough dropped the ball after Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s leadoff single, and that balk -- the second of his career -- allowed the runner to move to third base on a groundout. Joey Gallo then smashed a 109.3 mph single to right field, driving in a run. Cash and Yarbrough both said they’d never seen a moment like the lefty’s dropped-ball balk.

“I honestly didn't even know what it was,” Yarbrough said. “Just one of the things where it went behind my back. I tried to bring it up, and it literally just kind of got wedged out of my hand. It was just one of those weird things.”

The Rangers began the fourth inning with three straight singles, none of them hit particularly hard in Yarbrough’s estimation or according to Statcast -- they clocked in with exit velocities of 92.1, 75.5 and 88.6 mph. Then Nick Solak, the former Rays prospect, swatted a 1-1 changeup from Yarbrough to left field for a bases-clearing double. Solak came around to score on a double by Culberson, completing Texas’ four-run fourth.

“I feel like that's been what's happened the last two outings -- just the one inning that everything kind of piles up at one point. So that's really frustrating,” said Yarbrough, who is now winless in his last 20 starts dating back to Aug. 17, 2019. “You have to understand that it's early, but at the same time, you worked really hard at this craft, and you want to go out there and put a good product on the field. And so that ends up being really frustrating.”

Texas tacked on another run in the sixth, when Cash said the Rays got “sloppy” in the field. After Yarbrough recorded two quick outs, he walked Eli White then gave up a single to Culberson. After an RBI single by Kiner-Falefa, the Rangers pulled off a double steal before center fielder Brett Phillips made a sliding grab to end the inning.

“Overall, just kind of frustrating,” Cash said. “We didn't have our best showing tonight.”

Meanwhile, the Rays scored two runs in the first -- one on a Joey Wendle double, the other on a Yandy Díaz single and an error by Solak -- then struggled to gain any traction against Gibson. The right-hander only struck out three, but he cruised through seven innings on only 86 pitches.

Brandon Lowe and Díaz reached to begin the fourth, giving the Rays a chance to rally back after Yarbrough’s rough inning, only to see Yoshi Tsutsugo, Adames and Phillips go down in order.

“He settled in, for sure,” Wendle said. “Left a couple pitches over the middle of the plate there in the first inning, had a little trouble commanding the ball, then after that, he was pretty much lights out.”