The Tampa Bay Rays were swept by the Texas Rangers in the wild card round of the American League playoffs on Wednesday.
While shoddy defense and lack of timely hitting were the biggest culprits of the Rays' early exit, the national media has focused on poor attendance at Tropicana Field.
The Game 1 loss for Tampa had a record-low attendance, and Game 2 wasn't much better.
While it would be easy to pick on Rays fans or to call them out, Rays players like Pete Fairbanks and Brandon Lowe turned their attention to Major League Baseball, who gave the Rays back-to-back 3:08 starts on weekdays.
Evan Closky of WTSP had the audio from both players:
"... Playing at 3'o clock on a Tuesday and Wednesday, especially with everything that has hit the common household in the last three years, it does make it tough.." Fairbanks said.
"Tough time to get people here. When you announce a game with a day of heads up at 3 o'clock, people do have lives. People do have other things that they need to do, children, work, it's hard to get off..." Lowe said.
Both players aren't wrong and Lowe especially thanked the fans that were there and said they did a great job at giving the Rays energy.
It's a tough early-round exit for the Rays, who won 99 games this year. Unfortunately they couldn't stay healthy, losing pitchers Drew Rasmussen, Shane McClanahan for the year. They also lost Lowe and Luke Raley for the playoffs, and had to play without Wander Franco as well.
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