Joe Girardi unhappy after weather calls lead to 2:44 a.m. finish

NEW YORK -- Yankees manager Joe Girardi was unhappy with how umpires handled rain in his team's 9-6 loss to the Texas Rangers, a game that ended at 2:44 a.m. ET Tuesday.

The Yankees relinquished a 6-5 lead after a 3-hour, 35-minute rain delay in the ninth inning. It had poured throughout the game, but the officiating crew did not call for the tarp until the ninth inning after Girardi requested that closer Aroldis Chapman use a rosin bag and work on the mound. The crew delayed the game shortly after.

"I didn't ask to stop the game," Girardi said. "To me, the game should've been stopped earlier than that. We played in horrible conditions. I think you risk injury to players.

"It's hard for me to understand what happened tonight, how it got to this point. But it did, and we lost."

No players were hurt during the game. If the game had not resumed, it would have been called and the Yankees would have won.

"I think our intention was to finish that game," crew chief Paul Nauert said. "You've got to give both teams an equal, fair opportunity. We were going to wait as long as we could."

Rangers manager Jeff Banister protested the ninth-inning delay but otherwise didn't want to quibble with how the umpires handled the weather.

"What matters is they allowed this game to be completed," he said. "There's obviously agitation on both sides."

Girardi said he would have preferred to resume the game Tuesday evening before the regularly scheduled game. However, that is not how the rulebook is set up.

"It is the rules," Girardi said. "I think it should be looked at because it doesn't make sense to me."

The start of the game was delayed 21 minutes because of impending weather, but it didn't rain until the game was in progress. Nauert signaled for the tarp at 10:40 p.m, and the game resumed at 2:15 a.m. It resulted in the latest ending at the new Yankee Stadium.

"Just everything that was involved: the conditions, you're putting your athletes at risk, you're having them sit down for 3 hours, you're asking them to get loose again, you've got guys slipping all over the outfield. When does health become a concern?" Girardi said.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.