Rays’ Diaz on 10-day IL with Hamstring injury

The Rays have placed third baseman Yandy Diaz on the 10-day injured list, Juan Toribio of MLB.com tweets. Infielder Daniel Robertson will come up to take the roster opening. Diaz has been dealing with hamstring tightness that hasn’t resolved quite as rapidly as had been hoped.

The club obviously felt it could no longer afford to carry an unavailable player. There’s little reason at present to think that Diaz will be sidelined for more than the minimum, though it’ll all depend upon how the muscle heals up. The Rays will hope for a swift return for the 27-year-old, who has been everything they hoped for and more since arriving via trade.

Diaz has racked up 248 plate appearances of .286/.363/.502 hitting and 11 home runs on the season. That’s just the sort of output the Tampa Bay organization got last year from Robertson, but he scuffled to open the current campaign and ended up on optional assignment. There’s now a bit of a window for him to reclaim a MLB role, though there isn’t as much opportunity with Joey Wendle back in action.

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He had been out of the lineup for the first two games of the second-place Rays’ series against the first-place Yankees, both of which Tampa Bay lost. The Rays enter their game on Wednesday afternoon against the Yankees 2 1/2 games back in the AL East standings.

Robertson, who is hitting .205 with two home runs and 15 RBIs, had been demoted to Triple-A last weekend when the club recalled right-hander Jake Faria. The Rays head into Wednesday with six losses in their past eight games, their worst stretch of the season.

“They’re good,” Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash said of the Yankees. “Sometimes they win by hitting the ball out of the ballpark. Sometimes they win by finding holes. A bunch of good hitters.”

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