Trevor Cahill's pitching hurt the Arizona Diamondbacks again during the team's Tuesday night 7-5 loss to the Washington Nationals.
Cahill (3-8, 3.92 ERA), who only pitched one inning last week because of injury, was batted around by the Nationals lineup. After pitching two scoreless innings, the D-backs starter unraveled in the third, giving up five runs in the one inning.
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He started the inning with a walk and quickly allowed two RBI singles to Washington. He compounded the already rocky situation by permitting a three-run homer to former D-back Adam LaRoche, which gave the Nats a 5-0 lead.
Cahill would leave the game after the fifth innings, but not before surrendering another run on a sac fly to Ian Desmond. He finished with the game with six runs earned and eight hits given up, and continues to curse Arizona with his inconsistency.
While Cahill was busy allowing the Nationals to score, the Diamondbacks' offense wasn't doing much against the Gio Gonzalez (3-3, 3.34). The D-backs didn't score a run until the sixth inning when Miguel Montero hit an RBI single (probably because we figure that Gonzalez forgot to take his steroids for that particular inning). Gonzalez finished the game with four strikeouts and only gave up two runs in 6.1 innings pitched.
Even though Arizona was down 6-1 heading into the seventh, the D-backs managed to make the game interesting. Paul Goldschmidt hit his first of three singles to score A.J. Pollock and an error by Washington's second baseman Anthony Rendon allowed the D-backs third run of the game to score.
Martín Prado hit a ball over the left field fence for his sixth homerun of the year in the eighth to bring the D-backs within two, but an error by Brad Ziegler in the bottom of the eighth allowed the Nats to push the lead to three.
It looked as though Arizona had put on their rally caps in the ninth, but could only muster one run.
Though the loss marks the D-backs' second straight defeat, the game wasn't all bad news. Second baseman Aaron Hill finally returned from a fractured hand after missing 63 games. He showed little rust in his return, as he went two for four with a double and two runs scored.
The D-backs play the Nationals again tonight at 4:05 p.m. Wade Miley (4-6, 4.70) will be on the bump for Arizona and will face Jordan Zimmerman (10-3, 2.26). TV: Fox Sports Arizona. Radio: KTAR 620 AM. More info: www.dbacks.com.
