Since trading for Trevor Cahill, the young 24 year old has certainly had his ups and downs as a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks. His ERA currently sits at 3.63 on the season and his WHIP is a manageable 1.30. Going up against the Padres on Monday night, many would have expected that he would fare well against a struggling ball club. That wasn't the case, as Cahill got the loss in a 6-2 Diamondbacks defeat.
When simply asked what seemed to be the problem, Cahill had an equally simple answer. "I just really didn't feel comfortable out there the whole game. They were swinging early and I couldn't get my off-speed over for strikes, so I had to go fastballs. With an aggressive team like that, if they know what's coming, they're going to hit it. A lot of the pitches they hit were off-speed pitches, hanging up. A lot of the times I was just falling behind."
All of that came to fruition when Cahill threw Cameron Maybin a 3-1 fastball. Maybin then proceeded to blast it deep to left-center field. According to ESPN Stats & Info, the ball traveled approximately 485 feet, the longest hit ball in the majors this season and the fourth longest hit at Chase Field all-time.
The fact is, Cahill gave up just two earned runs as a pitcher. It may have been his work as a fielder that ended up sinking the Diamondbacks. In the sixth inning, a ball was hit sharply to Paul Goldschmidt, forcing Cahill to run over and cover first base. A pretty routine play, sure, but it had a less than routine ending. Cahill took his eye off the ball, allowing the runner to stay safe. Eventually, this error led to two more unearned runs.
"I just kind of took my eye off of it at the last second to look down and make sure I got the bag. I just didn't look it all the way in," Cahill said.
His manager, Kirk Gibson was none too pleased with that play either.
"He pitched okay, but he made an important error and it cost us two runs," Gibby said. "We were on a string here where we were playing really good defense, now we've been kicking it around a little bit and fundamentally tonight we did not play good at all."
Over the past seven games, the Diamondbacks have committed a total of eight errors after having not given up one in an 11 game streak, the most in franchise history. The offense and pitching can be as good as possible, but if the team is committing errors, that could be the crushing blow. For the Diamondbacks, on Monday night, that was exactly the case.
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