ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The Rays had been living on the edge, playing eight consecutive games decided by two runs or fewer. Everything was breathtakingly close.
Not Friday night.
This one had zero suspense. The Houston Astros threw the early punches and the Rays offered no counter-attack against sharp right-hander Lance McCullers Jr., falling 9-2 before 6,169 fans at Tropicana Field.
McCullers, the former Jesuit High School standout, allowed only three hits in seven shutout innings of work while striking out a season-high nine batters.
The Rays finally scored off Astros reliever Andre Scrubb in the ninth. Willy Adames had a two-out, two-run single, breaking a career-high 0-for-25 streak. Adames rounded first base and raised his arms toward the heavens.
But that’s all the Rays got.
Meanwhile, the Astros collected 15 hits off three Rays pitchers. They got to left-hander Ryan Yarbrough, who labored through a 35-pitch third inning when he surrendered four consecutive hits, including a two-run homer to Michael Brantley. Yarbrough battled through six innings, allowing nine hits (one off his career-high) and five earned runs.
The Rays slipped to 6-9 at the Trop, which already ties the total number of home defeats in the entire virus-shortened 2020 season.
Eight games into the season’s longest homestand, the numbers have turned grim. The Rays, 3-5 during that stretch, have scored only 19 runs and been shut out twice. The biggest culprit: The Rays are 3-for-their-last-50 with runners in scoring position.
Offense wasn’t a problem for the Astros against Yarbrough (1-3), who is winless in his last 21 starts, going 0-10 with a 5.13 ERA as a starter since Aug. 17, 2019. Overall, as a major-league pitcher, Yarbrough is 29-19 (83 games, 33 of them pure starts).
This season, Yarbrough is 0-3 as a starter with a 6.74 ERA.
In two outings as a “bulk’' pitcher — following an opener — Yarbrough is 1-0 with an 0.84 ERA.
Yarbrough nearly escaped the first inning, but with Michael Brantley (4-for-5) aboard, the Astros got two-out singles from Jordan Alvarez and Carlos Correa, making it 1-0.
In the third, Alex Bregman’s two-run homer and an RBI groundout by Aledmys Diaz extended Houston’s advantage to 4-0. Slow-footed catcher Martin Maldonado led off the fourth with a triple — it hit just inside the warning-track foul line and caromed past leftfielder Austin Meadows — and he scored on Brantley’s one-out single. Diaz produced a two-out RBI single off Rays reliever Trevor Richards in the seventh, then had a two-run double off Louis Head in the eighth.
The Rays couldn’t take advantage of their sparse opportunities.
After consecutive two-out walks to Austin Meadows and Manuel Margot in the third, Brandon Lowe struck out against McCullers. In the sixth, Lowe smacked a one-out double and went to third on Yandy Diaz’s sacrifice fly, but McCullers struck out Joey Wendle.
