DBacks 4, Braves 6: Running Up Cahill

Record: 37-37. Pace: 81-81. Change on Last Year: -3

It's been a little up and down for the Diamondbacks lately. Bauer's coming up? But it's because Saunders is on the DL. We swept a series at home? But it was against the Cubs. Drew's coming back? But Daniel Hudson is going to the DL with a UCL tear.

Certainly a roller coaster of emotion for the Arizona faithful, and yesterday's rout didn't help. But Cahill takes the mound, Stephen Drew was back for his first game since last July- could the Diamondbacks remain above .500? Well, if the score in the headline and the box score below this text didn't give it away, hit the jump for the answer...

The first inning wasn't much to write home about for the Diamondbacks- Drew took his first at-bat, but it wasn't too exciting, just grounding out to short. Justin Upton drew a walk and stole second uncontested, but was stranded there. In the bottom of the inning, the Braves had more success, with Jason Heyward hitting a solo home run with one out to give the Braves a 1-0 lead. Miguel Martin Prado followed that up with a double and later stole third, but Cahill kept Atlanta from doing any more damage.

And then Cahill locked in. After Prado's hit, Cahill found his stuff, sitting down the next 11 Braves batters in a row. Unfortunately for the Diamondbacks, Hanson was almost as good. Arizona got runners to second base in the fourth, with Drew's first hit since his return, and Aaron Hill reached all the way to third in the fifth, but they couldn't get a run across the plate. Midway through the fifth inning, it looked like we had a pretty good pitcher's duel going on.

But that changed when the Fire Nation attacked in the bottom of the fifth.

The bottom of the fifth started poorly, as Cahill gave up a leadoff walk to Chipper Jones. Freddie Freeman singled to move up the runner, and then tragedy struck. Cahill got a ground ball from Andrelton Simmons back to the mound, and turned to throw to second to start the potential double play. The scorer called it an error on Cahill, but it looked to me like Drew didn't get his glove over to catch the ball. Either way, the ball skittered off to center field- Jones come around to score, and Freeman and Simmons moved to second and third. Tommy Hanson drew a walk to load the bases, and a sac fly from Michael Bourn brought in the runner to score Freeman. Another walk (to Heyward) and another sac fly (by Prado) brought in another run, and it was 4-0 at the end of the inning.

The Diamondbacks looked like they might be able to threaten in the top of the sixth, but ran into trouble. Literally. Gerardo Parra singled to lead off the inning, but he was caught trying to steal second. Justin Upton hit a two-out double and took third on a wild pitch, but Jason Kubel struck out swinging to end the inning, and waste the runner.

Things got worse in the sixth for Cahill, as he stayed in the game. For two batters- Dan Uggla, who drew a walk, and Chipper Jones, who hit a two run home run to give the Braves whatever their local version of tacos is. (It may be called "scoring six runs.") That was enough for Cahill, or perhaps a bit too much, and he was pulled for Bryan Shaw. Shaw gave up a single to Freeman, but two strike outs and a ground out got him out of the inning without any trouble. Down by six, could the Diamondbacks put up any struggle?

Well, it turns out they could. Hanson finally began to slip in the seventh. Paul Goldschmidt grounded out, but Miguel Montero and Aaron Hill put up back to back singles to set up Ryan Roberts, and the Dread Pirate brought everyone home with a home run to deep left, sending Hanson to the dugout. Jonny Venters came in from the Atlanta dugout, and faced two pinch hitters. Willie Bloomquist hit for Shaw and ground out, but Chris Young came in to hit for Gerardo Parra, taking a pitch deep to center for his first home run since April 16. Time was running short, but the Diamondbacks had cut the Braves lead down to 6-4.

Mike Zagurski came in and gave a (surprising) quick, clean inning in the bottom of the seventh, and then the Diamondbacks tried to put together another big inning off Eric O'Flaherty. Justin Upton led off with a single, and then Paul Goldschmidt drew a one out walk to bring the go-ahead run to the plate. Unfortunately, that go-ahead run (in the form of Miguel Montero) grounded into a 4-6-3 double play, ending our threat.

And that was the end of our threat- David Hernandez kept Atlanta from doing anything, with a foul out and two strikes outs in the eighth, but Craig Kimbrel one-upped him by striking out the side in the top of the ninth, ending the game and giving Atlanta the game and the series win.

Lot of missed opportunities for the Diamondbacks, and some bad luck, too- but when you strand runners in scoring position like the DBacks did today, you're not going to win too often.

Fairly busy thread, passing 800 comments, with AzDbackfanInDc beating out imstillhungry95 by three posts on the day, our only two commenters to hit triple digits. We also got contributions from dbacks79, Jim McLennan, txzona, rd33, hotclaws, Clefo, blank_38, onedotfive, marionette, Bcawz, Fangdango, The so-called Beautiful, kishi, snakecharmer, Baseballdad, Circa4life, asteroid, Gildo, CaptainCanuck, BattleMoses, egboyz, shoewizard, xmet, Muu, blue bulldog, Zavada's Moustache, azshadowwalker, Gibbysdad, luckycc, 4 Corners Fan, PatrickPetersonAZ, GuruB, edbigghead, Joel Preston, JoeCB1991, since_98, and azwebber.

So the Diamondbacks lose, and fall back to .500. But don't let this weigh on your mind too much. No, because tomorrow, we mustn't dwell- no, not tomorrow. We can't! Not on Trevor Bauer day!