Dylan Cease, Padres pummeled by Diamondbacks

Kevin Acee, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Jul 10, 2025

Published in Baseball

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Every start is about the same.

Mike Shildt is “excited” to see Dylan Cease pitch.

“Love his arm and love his arsenal, and I’m excited for him tonight,” Shildt said Wednesday afternoon. “It’s gonna be a good night.”

That might have varied by a word or two from what the Padres manager has said before virtually every game in which Cease is about to pitch this season.

And then, it isn’t good. Or good enough.

Wednesday, it was neither.

Cease, who was counted on at the start of the season to be the same anchor in the rotation he was in 2024, continued to flounder almost inexplicably in an 8-2 loss to the Diamondbacks at Petco Park.

“It is a bit of a head scratcher,” Shildt said afterward.

The right-hander with the 98 mph fastball and devastating slider surrendered a home run in three successive innings and departed after six innings having allowed six runs on five hits and three walks.

He also struck out eight and got 16 misses on 48 swings against his two primary pitches.

“Stuff felt pretty good,” Cease said. “… It hasn’t been my sharpest stretch. And I definitely could be executing better, but I do feel like I pitch better than a lot of the results. But at the end of the day, you can’t really run away from the results. They are what they are.”

As confounding as Cease’s struggles are, they are becoming predictable. And the same can be said of the Padres’ offense.

The Padres on Wednesday did what they have done so often this season, as well, hardly scoring and somehow making a struggling pitcher look like Cease used to look.

That is, dominant.

Diamondbacks starter Brandon Pfaadt entered Wednesday’s game with a 5.42 ERA and went eight innings for the first time in his career.

The Padres scored both their runs and managed four hits against the right-hander, who had not had a quality start in any of his last eight starts leading up to Wednesday.

Fernando Tatis Jr. led off the bottom of the first inning with a double grounded down the line and into the corner in left field.

The three outs that followed began another fruitless night with runners in scoring position, as the Padres finished 0-for-5 and have gone 16-for-97 (.165) with runners in scoring position over their past 14 games.

Wednesday was the 20th time in their past 50 games that they failed to score even three runs.

After Tatis’ double, the Padres’ next baserunner came with one out in the fifth inning on a single by Xander Bogaerts.

It was 6-0 by then, because Cease (3-9, 4.88 ERA) kept leaving pitches where he shouldn’t.

Cease threw seven strikes in the first inning. That was it. No balls. A three-pitch strikeout by Corbin Carroll, a ground out on a check swing on the first pitch to Ketel Marte and a pop-up by Geraldo Perdomo inspired visions of his having the kind of night he has so often had in his career.

He went on to retire all three batters he faced in the second and the Diamondbacks’ first batter in the third before leaving a fastball up and on the inner third of the plate that James McCann lined to the second deck of seats beyond left field at 110 mph.

Cease got right back to being nasty, setting down the next four batters before his first pitch to Eugenio Suarez, a slider hung belt-high on the outer portion of the plate, was hit high and landed just beyond the left field wall.

That made Wednesday the third consecutive start in which Cease allowed two home runs.

It would become the first time since Sept. 5, 2023, while pitching for the White Sox, that he gave up three homers.

And the next did not do just one run’s worth of damage.

No, Perdomo hit a grand slam in the fifth inning after Cease had walked two batters and surrendered a single.

Bogaerts got the Padres on the scoreboard in the fifth after grounding a ball through the right side of the infield, advancing to third base on Jake Cronenworth’s double and running home on a ground out by Bryce Johnson.

Gavin Sheets made it 6-2 with a home run leading off the bottom of the seventh inning.

It would have taken a lot more offense than that to overcome what the Diamondbacks were able to do to Cease. And the Padres have scored six runs once in their past 10 games.

Cease has said several times after starts, including his most recent, that there remains time to turn around his season.

But he is 19 starts in, and things are not trending in the right direction.

Cease has shown glimpses of the pitcher who threw a no-hitter and finished fourth in National League Cy Young voting last season, such as when he shut out the Dodgers on three hits and struck out 11 over seven innings on June 10.

Wednesday was his second straight start going six innings, but he allowed 10 runs between the two games.

“I feel like I just need to kind of weather the storm and just keep moving forward,” Cease said. “I like the work I’ve put in. I feel like I’m really close, and there’s a lot of things that are positive. I just haven’t put it all together yet.”