Fernando Tatis Jr., Jake Cronenworth leave game as Padres fall to A's

Kevin Acee, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Apr 9, 2025

Published in Baseball

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WEST SACRAMENTO — It was not a good Tuesday for the team with the best record in the major leagues.

It was potentially a terrible Tuesday.

The Padres lost one of the catalysts to their offense before their game against the Athletics, lost a three-run lead early in the game, had two other crucial players depart midgame and then lost the game.

Dylan Cease threw too many pitches outside the strike zone and too many in the heart of the strike zone and suffered through one of the worst starts of his career, allowing nine runs over the first three innings of a 10-4 defeat.

The Padres began the day with a 9-2 record, better than any other MLB club this season and better than any Padres team ever with the exception of the franchise’s only two World Series entrants (1984, 1998).

By the time it was over, they still had the best winning percentage in the league but did not have quite the same team.

They are down Jackson Merrill for at least the next seven games and possibly Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jake Cronenworth for an indeterminate amount of time.

The Padres made the decision earlier Tuesday to put Merrill, who is batting .378 with a team-high three home runs and 10 RBIs, on the injured list with a strained right hamstring.

In the third inning, they watched as Cronenworth bent over in pain after putting a ball in play, having appeared to wrench his knee on the swing. After that half-inning was finished, he walked across the outfield to the Padres clubhouse accompanied by athletic trainer Ben Fraser. Cronenworth is batting .257 with two doubles, two home runs and eight walks, and he has reached base in all but two of the team’s 12 games.

A swing in the second inning, the second of his three times to bat, is apparently what had Tatis walking off the field after the fourth inning. He winced following his first swing in the second inning, swung at the next pitch without any visible sign of distress and then took three straight balls for a walk. He hit a fly ball out in the fourth. Tatis is batting .364 with two home runs and seven walks. The Padres did not provide updates on either player before the end of the game.

The night began much better than it ended.

It began, actually, the same way the Padres’ victories the previous two days had begun — with them scoring three times in the top of the first.

For the second time in those three games, however, they trailed by the time the inning was over. Unlike Sunday in Chicago, they would not come back.

All eight runs in Tuesday’s first inning crossed home plate with two outs.

Manny Machado started the scoring by sending his first home run of the season to the grassy hill beyond right field. A Xander Bogaerts single and Yuli Gurriel double made it 2-0, and Gurriel scored from second on a throwing error by A’s third baseman Gio Urshela.

Athletics left-hander Jeffrey Springs threw 33 pitches in the inning.

Cease had two outs and runners at the corners and was ahead 0-2 on against JJ Bleday when he laid a fastball in the heart of the strike zone that Bleday sent to the gap in right center to drive in both runners.

Cease again got up 0-2 to the next batter, Miguel Andujar, before making another mistake with a sinker in the heart of the zone that Andujar lined softly into center field to tie the game.

Three pitches later, it was 6-3, as Jacob Wilson singled, Urshela doubled and Max Muncy singled on the first pitch they each saw from Cease.

Only because he took six pitches to strike out Lawrence Butler, the 10th batter of the inning, did Cease throw 26 pitches.

The Padres loaded the bases on singles by Martín Maldonado and Arraez around a walk by Tatis before making an out in the second. But they would only make outs after that — a strikeout by Machado, sacrifice fly by Bogaerts and strikeout by Gurriel — and got just one run.

Cease walked the first batter he faced in the bottom of the second before a two grounders, the latter a double play, ended the inning.

He would allow three more runs in the third before retiring the A’s in order in the fourth.

The nine earned runs were the most Cease has allowed in any of his 159 career starts. He had allowed eight twice before, in 2023 against the A’s, when he allowed nine total runs over 4⅓ innings, and in his rookie season in ‘19, when he allowed eight runs in two innings against the Twins.

Yuki Matsui surrendered a home run to Bleday in the seventh.

The victory was the Athletics’ first in five games at Sutter Health Park, their temporary home for at least a couple years while they await a new ballpark in Las Vegas.