Padres’ Dylan Cease throws no-hitter against Nationals
Dylan Cease threw a no-hitter Thursday night against the Nationals He became only the 2nd pitcher to ever in Padres history to accomplish the feat.
Jul 25, 2024 07:32 PM
Jul 25, 2024, 03:32 PM ET
WASHINGTON — Looking for a chance at the top of the table and throw only the 2nd no-hitter of San Diego Padres history, Dylan Cease got some help from the pitcher who pitched the first.
Cease was 94 pitches over seven innings at the time Padres director Mike Shildt glanced at Joe Musgrove.
“Joe is like, ‘His stuff is pretty good,'” Shildt said. “Well, he’s thrown one. He knows what this looks like. We let him ride.”
Cease 28-year-old Cease needed only nine pitches in eighth and eleven in the ninth to earn the 3-0 win against the Washington Nationals on Thursday to complete the sweep of three games.
After coming one short of a no-hitter two seasons back, when he allowed an unearned run to his teammates Luis Arraez, Cease ended the game by retiring Ildemaro Vargas and Jacob Young on groundouts to start both the two first pitches in the ninth inning, before getting CJ Abrams to fly out to right with an 1-1 slider.
“My thought was I’m going to throw a slider and I’m going to get it down, and if it’s down he’s either hopefully going to beat it into the ground or he can’t put in play,” Cease declared. “I didn’t like it off the bat. It looked very hitterish, but fortunately fate’s on my side today.”
Cease (10-8) hit nine batters and walked three times in the right-handed pitcher’s third complete game in 145 major league starts. He threw a record-breaking 114 pitches in a contest that featured a 1 hour rain delay lasting 16 minutes during the opening.
“The first inning, he comes in and says ‘I’m not quite there,'” Shildt remembered. “The second inning, ‘Getting there.’ Then the third inning, he just hit his stride.”
Musgrove pitch the Padres their the first No-Hitter in the series against Texas in April 2021. Houston’s Ronel Blanco pitched the only other no-hitter of the season in the game against Toronto the first day of April.
Cease was one step ahead of a no-hitter by the Chicago White Sox against Minnesota on September. 3 2022. Arraez struck a single right-center on a 1-slider across center of strike zone.
“I’ve been close and to finally get it done, it’s one of those things that feels so remarkable and hard to believe,” Cease declared. “To be able to do it and go out and experience it, I really don’t even know how to feel. Just happy.”
He was concerned about his pitch count resulting in an early ending to his game.
“Thankfully, we were able to talk it out,” Cease explained. “I just said, ‘I feel really good right now. Next inning, if I’m kind of erratic or use up too many pitches, pull me then. But give me a shot, at least.’ Thankfully, we worked it out.”
Shildt told reporters he wouldn’t be willing allow Cease’s pitch count to climb into the 120s. He also said there wasn’t any more discussion following Cease took over the eighth.
“I just love the conviction,” Shildt told reporters. “I think it’s important in my chair to be able to be open-minded and listen to your athletes. He felt good. He felt convicted. He made a really strong case. I want him to go out, too, but looking at the big picture and the factor [of the rain delay] before, and once I cleared that with him, he was good.”
The closest Washington was to hitting came the moment Juan Yepez flew a fly low center in the fifth in the fifth. The ball flew out of the second baseman Xander Bogaerts’ glove however the center fielder Jackson Merrill was there to catch the ball just before it landed on the ground.
“I was just playing keepy-ups, making sure it didn’t hit the ground,” Merrill declared. “As soon as he calls me off, I’m there and I’m ready for anything that happened — if it bounces off him, goes the other way, I’m ready for anything.”
Bogaerts also threw an errant ball after making an edging stop to Keibert Ruiz’s ball with one off in the 8th. He was able to recover just in time to throw it to the slow-footed catcher the first.
“It feels like every no-hitter, there’s a couple plays like that are just remarkable,” Cease declared.
Cease pitched 60 sliders against the Nationals as well as 39 fastballs, averaging 98.3 miles per hour -+ 1.4 more mph than his season-average and ten curves with knuckles. Cease was able to induce 12 groundouts. The Nationals hit at and missed 18 occasions, which included six strikeouts.
The previous games he played in a complete format were shutouts. A seven-inning triple-hitter against Detroit on the 29th of April 2021 and a victory over the Twins.
The no-hitter reduced the odds of betting for Cease to take home the NL Cy Young Award at ESPN BET, where he went from 100-1, to 40-1. Cease is in a tie to Logan Webb for the fifth-shortest odds for this award on ESPN BET which is after the Atlanta’s Chris Sale (+135) and the Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler (+185) and Pittsburgh rookie Paul Skenes (+275).
Cease permitted only three base runners. Lane Thomas walked with one out in the beginning in the third inning, and was caught taking and then reached for a walks in the fifth, but was wiped out by Jesse Winker’s double play grounder. Abrams took a walk in the seventh inning and ended up on second base.
Cease has thrown 22 shutout inning in his last three starts and pitched seven innings of single-hit closed-out baseball against Washington on June 26.
“He kept our hitters off balance all game and never really gave us much to hit,” Nationals manager Dave Martinez said.
Washington was hitless for the second time in a row. Former Phillies pitcher Michael Lorenzen achieved this feat in August. 9.
San Diego has won five consecutive times and is now the third sweep of series of the year and its their first road sweep. The Padres have swept Oakland as well as Washington at home in the month of March.
Washington was eliminated by the Nationals for the 6th time during the season, and went at 0-6 in the series against San Diego. This marked the first occasion that the Padres won without losing against the Montreal Expos/Nationals franchise since the franchises joined in with the National League in 1969.
San Diego loaded the bases in the first inning with two walks and a single in the first against Patrick Corbin (2-10) before the delay that followed the first pitch was thrown to Ha-Seong Kim. The game resumed and Kim completed for a full count, before hitting the ball to left-center, which brought home all three runner.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.