"It happens to most pitchers over the course of a long season. Sometimes it feels as though they can't get the arm loose or maybe they rear back to fire a fastball past a hitter and the giddy-up isn't there. It's kind of like a car when it spins its wheels or a runner stuck in the mud.

Cole Hamels said he knew it was one of those games on his first pitch in Friday night's 4-2 defeat to the Washington Nationals at the Bank.

Pitchers call it the "dead arm start," which makes it sound bad or at least worse than the subpar digits posted during that particular start of the season. But really it's nothing more than some in-season fatigue that comes from throwing a baseball nearly every day since the middle of February.

So for those looking for a reason why it took Hamels 88 pitches to throw five shaky innings, chalk it up to the dead-arm start. Don't look too much deeply into than that, says Hamels.

All told, the Phils' lefty gave up three runs on six hits and a season-high four walks to fall to 13-7.

"It's just one of those times in the year where you're traveling and pitching a lot of innings, things kind of amount and you just have to get through it," Hamels explained. "If you're able to battle through it and things go well, you don't notice it and you keep on moving.""