Dylan Cease wild, Dodgers blank Padres to clinch season series

LOS ANGELES — After the trade deadline passed, A.J. Preller reiterated that the Padres’ best team employs Dylan Cease.

The Padres president of baseball operations was talking about the good Dylan Cease, the man capable of shutting down teams and throwing no-hitters.

That is not who climbed the mound in the first inning Saturday at Dodger Stadium.

The Jekyll-and-Hyde hurler walked the first three hitters he faced and pushed that total to six — one shy of a career worst — before yet another early exit as the Dodgers won 6-0 at Dodger Stadium. The Padres’ National League West rival returned to first place and clinched the season series against the Padres, as the Dodgers have won seven of nine meetings this season.

“It’s not a nice record,” Padres shortstop Xander Bogaerts said Saturday. “Yesterday was a really good baseball game, both sides of the ball, and today, I mean, it just got out of hand a little early in the game.”

Indeed, the Padres at least had the tying run on base in the ninth on Friday.

A day later, they were thrown out three times on the bases through the first two innings and never managed to get Blake Snell off his game in his first outing against his old team.

The 2023 Cy Young Award winner allowed three of his five hits inside the first two innings, including leadoff singles from Fernando Tatis Jr. in the first and Bogaerts in the second inning.

Both were thrown out trying to steal during the ensuing at-bats by catcher Will Smith.

The first might have cost the Padres a run as Luis Arraez followed with a ground rule double. Manny Machado followed with a walk, and he too was thrown out trying to take second on the back end of a double steal.

Snell practically cruised from there, finishing with six shutout innings in beating the team that employed him from 2021 through 2023.

“I think it’s respect,” Snell said of the Padres’ aggressiveness on the bases. “Nobody knows me better than Ruben (Niebla), knowing what I can do pitching, outside of (Rays pitching coach) Kyle Snyder. They’re pretty neck and neck. So that, (A.J.) Preller, (Mike) Shildt, they know me so well. So they understand what the game’s going to be.

“That’s what I thought. Maybe it’s different. But it’s the respect level.”

Cease had been on a roll since sticking with the Padres at the trade deadline, striking out 16 over 11 innings (1.64 ERA) in winning his two starts in dominant fashion.

On Saturday, he was off from the start, walking Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Smith to begin the game. The Dodgers plated a run on Teoscar Hernández’s one-out sacrifice fly and two more, after a walk to Andy Pages, on Michael Conforto’s single to right.

The pitch count reaching 37 was reason enough for David Morgan to begin warming up in the first inning.

“Walks kill you,” Cease said. “At the end of the day, I didn’t really give us a chance.”

Cease ultimately escaped the first. But by the time that center fielder Jackson Merrill’s error on what should have been an inning-ending catch allowed two more runs to score — after another walk — the mission had seemingly switched to giving the Padres as much length as possible.

But that only got Cease into the fourth inning, with Ohtani’s single — just the Dodgers’ second hit of the game — finally chasing Cease after 88 pitches (44 strikes).

Cease struck out just two, and only three of the five runs he allowed in 3⅓ innings were earned.

But the traffic was all his doing, and it backed up on him in historic fashion.

Only five other pitchers in franchise history had ever walked six or more batters while allowing just two hits, with Jarred Cosart last enduring that kind of day in August 2016.

Cease’s outing continued a curious year for a pitcher who threw a no-hitter last year, collected Cy Young votes for the second time in his career and can pile up strikeouts with the best of them.

When he’s good, he’s good, as evidenced by the 1.16 ERA in his five victories this year. But Cease entered the game with a 7.24 ERA in his 10 losses, and the command issues snowballed on him in a key matchup with the Padres’ chief rival.

“I’ve been inconsistent this year, unfortunately,” Cease said. “When it’s good, I’m commanding all my pitches. When it’s bad, it seems like it’s not finding the zone. … It’s disappointing, but I gotta flush it and get ready for the next one.”

One of those wins this year was against the Dodgers, a June 10 start in which he struck out 11 over seven shutout innings.

And it’s hard not to think about Cease’s two postseason starts against the Dodgers last year. He allowed five runs in 3⅓ innings in giving up an early 3-0 lead in Game 1 of the NLDS at Dodger Stadium and allowed three runs in 1⅔ innings on short rest in a Game 4 loss at Petco Park.

The Padres were ultimately bounced in five games.

The consequence on Saturday was simply stress testing baseball’s best bullpen and dropping the Padres a game behind the Dodgers in the NL West.

In the long run, there’s plenty of time to make that up.

The bigger concern in the interim is the innings suddenly piling up on the bullpen in this series.

Excluding Randy Vásquez’s bulk work on Friday, relievers have covered nine of the 16 innings so far in this series, with Morgan (1⅔ IP, 1 ER), Yuki Matsui (1 IP) and Ron Marinaccio (2 IP) mopping up after Cease on Saturday and the Padres playing 11 more games in a row before their next day off.

“It’s a long stretch,” Merrill said. “There’s still so much season left, too. Can’t really focus on right now and kind of be like, ‘Wow this determined our season,’ because we still have a month and a half left to play.

“We’ve got time.”