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Home sick: Padres' Petco scoreless streak hits 27 innings in loss to Yankees

Jeff Sanders, The San Diego Union-Tribune on

Published in Baseball

SAN DIEGO — Mookie Betts. Shohei Ohtani. Freddie Freeman.

As the tops of lineups go, the San Diego Padres see the best of the best on a regular basis.

These Yankees are something different.

“It’s a real lineup,” Padres manager Mike Shildt acknowledged at the start of the series. “There’s some similarities there, for sure. I think there might be some more length to this one.”

Certainly more than the Padres have been able to match at home, where they endured 27 straight scoreless innings before Fernando Tatis Jr.’s solo homer in a 4-1 loss in front of a sellout crowd of 44,845 amounted to a shout into an ever-increasing void.

Before that, the last time the Padres scored a run at home was on a wild pitch in the seventh inning on May 14.

The Colorado Rockies blanked the Padres to close that homestand, the Yankees homered four times in a shutout on Friday and Aaron Judge dug Dylan Cease into a quick hole on Saturday with a two-run homer, his 11th in a scorching May.

That was all the Yankees needed to get past the Padres at home, where they are 10-17 on the season and hitting .222, the fourth-worst total in baseball.

Saturday’s flop saw the Padres go 0-for-4 with runners in scoring position, with three of zeroes coming after Jake Cronenworth led off the fourth with a triple to right.

But he couldn’t have known that Alex Verdugo’s throw to the plate would have been so far up the first base line on Manny Machado’s fly ball to left. Cronenworth tagged but quickly retreated, David Peralta’s ensuing fly ball to left was even shallower and Jackson Merrill struck out to leave Cronenworth stranded at third base.

No other Padres advanced past second base until after Marcus Stroman’s exit and Tatis only touched the bases on the way home on his home run off Luke Weaver.

Yankees closer Clay Holmes set down the Padres in order in the ninth.

 

Following the tone set by Carlos Rodon on Friday, Stroman struck out five and scattered three hits, a walk and a hit batter over six strong innings before handing a 4-0 lead to the Yankees bullpen.

Cease didn’t get much time to settle into a pitchers’ duel of any sort.

Anthony Volpe roped the first pitch of the game to left, Juan Soto popped out and Judge yanked the third of pitch of his at-bat —an 0-2 knuckle curve that dropped right into the heart of the strike zone — 429 feet to left for a quick 2-0 lead.

It was Judge’s second homer in as many nights in San Diego and his 11 th in 23 games in May.

Judge wasn’t done.

His double down the left-field line was the start of another two-run rally in the fourth. Anthony Rizzo ultimately cashed him in with a single to right and Gleyber Torres tacked on with a sacrifice fly to center, all the damage the Yankees needed to claim the series heading into Sunday’s finale.

Cease went on to pitch into the seventh, striking out nine without walking a batter. He did, however, allow eight hits in pushing that total to 17 over his last two starts and he’s got a 6.61 ERA in three starts since striking out 12 over seven one-hit innings at Wrigley Field on May 8.

None of the hits that Cease allowed on Saturday belonged to Soto, who was 0-for-4 with two strikeouts a day after homering in his return to Petco Park as a Yankee.

That did not slow a deep lineup all around him as Volpe, Judge and Verdugo all had two hits each off Cease.

Yuki Matsui got Soto to ground out to second to end the seventh and pitched a scoreless eighth and Enyel De Los Santos pitched out of a ninth-inning jam.


©2024 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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