Dylan Cease has not looked like Dylan Cease yet.
The Padres at least scored a run, but these Padres hardly look like the Padres that began the week with baseball’s best record.
A sixth-inning run to halt a scoreless streak at 30 innings in a 4-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays on Saturday night at Petco Park was a mere whisper into a hurricane of bumps and bruises that may have added yet another body to an ever-growing injured list.
Losing a long man like Logan Gillaspie to left oblique strain is not at all like losing Jackson Merrill to a hamstring strain or Jake Cronenworth to a fractured rib or Luis Arraez to a concussion.
But it is the sort of thing that can add up — and has.
The Padres began the season with five pitchers on the injured list, headlined by Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove. The number of bodies on the shelf has since doubled, leading utility infielder Mason McCoy to attempt to play through the pinky that he dislocated on the final play of Friday’s loss.
“No one’s going to feel sorry for us,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said after his team dropped a third straight game for the first time this season. “Nobody at all. And we’re not going to feel sorry for us. We haven’t and we won’t. It’s a chin-up, figure-it-out clubhouse and I feel the same way.
“We’re more than capable of being able to … put it together.”
The Padres at least have multiple avenues to cover the time that Gillaspie will undoubtedly miss after doubling over after a seventh-inning pitch and walking off with a trainer.
Ryan Bergert was called up Friday as the Padres temporarily shifted to a four-man rotation and he turned in a scoreless eighth in his debut on Saturday. Kyle Hart could return immediately if Gillaspie lands on the injured list. Stephen Kolek, Omar Cruz and Ron Marinaccio are also length options on the 40-man roster.
The Padres, however, have not yet found a salve for a busted lineup.
They’ve scored just one run since Elias Díaz’s second-inning home run on Tuesday in Detroit, with third-string center fielder Tyler Wade tripling to open the sixth and scoring on Fernando Tatis Jr.’s single to halt the scoreless streak at 30 innings, seven shy of the 1971 franchise record.
The Padres managed just four other hits in the game, saw Rays rookie Chandler Simpson rob Manny Machado of a home run in the seventh inning and are hitting .138 during a three-game skid that’s carried them from the best record in baseball to looking up in the NL West standings for the first time since April 6.
It’s not hard to see why.
First, Merrill went down. Then Cronenworth. Tatis lost just one game to a false alarm, but Brandon Lockridge, Jason Heyward and Arraez have since hopped onto the injured list. Adding insult to all that injury, Xander Bogaerts dropped a pop-up to lead to a run, Machado committed a throwing error to lead to another, the Padres made three outs on the bases and the staff combined for six walks.
“Tonight’s the first night I’ve kind of seen (pressing) a little bit,” Shildt said. “A couple good pitching performances against us (on Wednesday and Friday). Guys are competing their tails off. Guys are hungry. They want to get back on the good side of this thing and we will. Just a few guys trying to do too much, pushing it a little too hard on the bases. We like to be aggressive, but we want to make sure we’re letting the game come to us.”
Cease at least lowered his ERA to 5.76 with three runs — two earned — allowed in Saturday’s start. The problem is, he failed to complete even five innings and has just one quality start to begin his walk year.
He walked a season-high four batters, threw just 54 of his 95 pitches for strikes and exited with the bases loaded with one out in the fifth inning.
The Rays tacked on a run on pinch-hitter Curtis Mead’s sacrifice fly to right. The first two runs scored in the third inning — one on Brandon Lowe’s solo homer and another on a Christopher Morel double after Bogaerts’ botched catch on a pop-up to add traffic to Cease’s busy night.
“I’m going to have to sit down with (pitching coach Ruben Niebla) and come up with a plan,” said Cease, who finished fourth in NL Cy Young voting last year. “…It’s not necessarily something that’s far away. It’s just not quite in that good rhythm right now.”
The full-strength Padres wouldn’t have batted an eye at a 3-0 deficit after five innings.
This shorthanded version has turned such molehills into mountains.
They wasted Tatis’ double to open the game when he was caught in a rundown on Machado’s tapper back to the mound. Tirso Ornelas was picked off first base after a leadoff walk in the second inning. Wade was caught trying to steal second with Tatis up in the third.
Wade at least atoned for that gaffe with a leadoff triple that set up the Padres’ lone run. He later doubled with two outs in the eighth, but Tatis struck out with runners on first and second to end that threat and a Machado throwing error in the ninth added traffic for Jason Adam, who wound up walking in a run to pad the Rays’ lead.
Machado doubled with one out in the ninth, but Bogaerts popped out to a smattering of boos and Ornelas grounded out to end a loss that knocked the Padres into a tie for second with the Dodgers in the NL West, a half-game behind the surprising Giants.
“We just have to go out there and perform — simple as that,” said Tatis, who accounted for two of his team’s five hits. “We have guys over here that can do the job. … Better at-bats overall as a group. Clean it up on the bases, keep playing better defense.
“We just have to regroup together.”
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