Among the Padres to learn about Jackson Merrill’s life-changing extension as he awoke Wednesday morning, Dylan Cease greeted his 21-year-old center fielder with a grin in a mostly empty clubhouse following the fourth-floor press conference at Petco Park.
It was Cease’s day to pitch.
You do not mess with a starting pitcher on his day.
“I can’t believe you did that to me,” Cease said with a laugh.
Cease went on to have a pretty good day, too. Just not as good as Merrill’s.
Cease struck out seven over a strong 6⅓ innings, Merrill properly celebrated his new nine-year, $135 million deal with a home run and the Padres capped a perfect week of baseball with a 5-2 win over the Cleveland Guardians in front of a crowd of 35,858 at Petco Park.
“Couldn’t have scripted it better,” Cease said. “I mean, baseball is fun in general, but winning is definitely a lot more fun.”
Especially like this.
No other Padres team had ever started a season with five straight wins.
These Padres are flying to Wrigley Field with a 7-0 start to the season and the designation as one of two unbeaten teams left in the majors.
The other?
The Dodgers, who won two games in Japan last month to start their season, swept the Tigers over the weekend in Los Angeles and then swept the reeling Braves with a walk-off home run by Shohei Ohtani on Wednesday night.
This marks just the fifth time that multiple teams have started a year with seven straight wins. Whatever those teams had in common — the 2003 Royals and Giants, the 1982 Braves and White Sox, the 1962 Pirates and Cardinals and the 1884 Maroons and Gothams — the ties binding this generation of Padres and Dodgers are top of mind after Los Angeles bounced San Diego from last year’s NLDS.
“We’re in the same momentum of last year,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “Obviously, they won it all and obviously we were one game — we were en route to do the same thing — but they got ahead of us. Both teams are just hungry. We got to show it more than them. We just have to come and play every single game like this.”
Tatis was referring to Wednesday’s series finale to cap three-game sweep of the Guardians.
He could have been talking about just about any game over the last week as the Padres pressured their way to a perfect homestand with opportunistic base-running and timely hits.
On Wednesday, Merrill’s third-inning homer capped a four-run rally that began with two outs.
Tatis beat out an infield single, then advanced to third base when Luis Arraez followed with a base-hit to left.
Arraez took off for second base on an 0-1 breaking ball, then stopped short of the bag as Tatis dashed home from third base.
Guardians second baseman Daniel Schneeman intercepted catcher Bo Naylor’s throw in front of the bag and threw home rather than attempting to chase down Arraez for the third out.
His throw to the plate was high, allowing Tatis to slide in safely for a steal of home for the game’s first run.
“Credit to our manager and our coaches,” Tatis said. “We have been working on it. It’s a play that we have designed and practiced and, man, it’s paying off. We’re playing really aggressive baseball, and I really enjoyed that one.”
The Padres plated a second run on third baseman José Ramirez’s wild throw to first on a grounder from Manny Machado, and Merrill opened up a 4-0 lead with a home run to right-center field, his second in as many games.
The blast arrived hours after the Padres and Merrill finalized an extension that had been in the works for some time. Merrill acknowledged an ovation from fans with a wave of his hand from center field before the third inning after the Petco Park videoboard displayed the update. Ever the showman, he gave the crowd something else to cheer with the first-pitch homer off Ben Lively in the fourth inning.
“It’s not surprising, honestly,” Cease said. “I mean, anytime he hits a home run, it’s not surprising. Feels about right for the script.”
Arraez hit his first home run in the seventh, answering the lone run that Cease coughed up in his first win of the season.
A five-pitch sixth inning allowed Cease to climb the mound again in the seventh, but he allowed a leadoff walk to Carlos Santana and had runners on second and third after Gavin Sheets, in his first start in left field, threw to third base instead of second after tracking down Nolan Jones’ single toward the corner.
Lane Thomas’ ensuing groundball to short cut the Padres’ lead to 4-1 and ended Cease’s afternoon.
But an assist from fill-in third baseman Jose Iglesias on a diving play to his right — Machado served as the DH — helped Wandy Peralta escape the rest of the inning unscathed. The bullpen’s scoreless streak was snapped at 24 innings in the eighth when Adrián Morejon coughed up a run, but a double-play ball with runners on the corners ended that frame.
Robert Suarez pitched a perfect ninth to finish off a perfect week of baseball.
“Seven and oh — it doesn’t get much better,” Cease said. “ … That’s about as good as you can do right there.”
