Odorizzi exits early with left-oblique tightness

SEATTLE -- Jake Odorizzi had to leave Friday night's 1-0 Rays win over the Mariners because of left-oblique tightness.

With two on and one out in the fifth, the right-hander threw his first pitch to Logan Morrison and felt a pain in his left side.

"Just that last pitch," Odorizzi said. "It was kind of a one pitch type of thing. ... Tightened up, grabbed me. And that was that."

Rays trainers and manager Kevin Cash went to the mound and shortly thereafter Odorizzi left the game despite Odorizzi's request to try to see how he felt if he threw just one practice pitch.

"You get grabbed and you don't know what's going on when you're pitching," Odorizzi said. "You've never felt something like that before. It's kind of startling more than anything. It let go and I wanted to throw another pitch just to see how it felt and they told me no. They were doing their job, but I was trying to get one pitch just to see if it was a cramp and throw through it. We'll find out more tomorrow."

Letting Odorizzi throw a practice pitch did not make sense in Cash's mind.

"He's too valuable to us," Cash said. "If we can prevent something from really getting bad. I think that was the smart thing to do."

Odorizzi said an MRI has not been scheduled at this point.

"We're just coming in tomorrow and see how it feels and we'll go from there," Odorizzi said. "See how I'm feeling 24 hours from now."

Once Odorizzi left the game, Xavier Cedeno was called upon to clean up the mess. After taking his time to warm up -- which is allowed when a pitcher leaves with an injury -- the left-hander then retired Morrison and Robinson Cano on groundouts to keep the game scoreless.