Cease, Merrill put on show for Padres, avoid injury scares

NEW YORK -- We’ll start with the good news for the Padres. It’s more important, anyway.

Both Dylan Cease and Jackson Merrill were dealt injury scares on Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium. Cease exited alongside a team trainer, flexing his right forearm in the top of the seventh inning. Merrill was struck by a Devin Williams fastball in the left forearm in the top of the 10th.

In both cases, the Padres appear to have avoided significant injury. The team believes Cease was dealing only with a forearm cramp, and he passed all tests from the training staff postgame. Merrill, who returned Tuesday from a month-long absence due to a right hamstring strain, remained in the game and said afterward that he was fine.

For the Padres, that made the bad news somewhat palatable. Despite the best efforts of Cease and Merrill -- who were both excellent on Wednesday -- San Diego dropped its series finale to the Yankees, 4-3, in 10 innings, having blown a pair of late leads.

For most of the night, Cease was back to his dominant best, and he carried a no-hitter into the seventh before Cody Bellinger’s solo shot tied the game. Two batters later, Cease felt his right hand tense up and he paused on the mound. Head athletic trainer Mark Rogow promptly emerged from the dugout.

“I, honestly, would have liked to have kept going,” Cease said. “But I think it was the right call.”

Cease did his best to convince manager Mike Shildt to let him throw a few warmup tosses. Shildt was having none of it. Cease had done his part, and the Padres weren’t taking any chances.

Over the course of his seven seasons in the big leagues, Cease has been one of the most durable pitchers in the sport. He virtually never misses a turn in the rotation and has made 32 starts in each of the past four seasons.

He plans to make his next one.

“I’m expecting to, for sure,” Cease said. “I doubt [there will be any more tests]. I passed all the other stuff with flying colors. I really think it was just a freak cramp.”

Given how well he pitched on Wednesday, the Padres can only hope so. The start to Cease’s 2025 season has been a rocky one. He entered Wednesday with a 5.61 ERA. But this was the version of Cease who finished top-five in National League Cy Young voting last year.

“Legitimate no-hit stuff,” Shildt said. “I thought there was going to be a decision about whether that was going to be a combined one or his. But Bellinger had something to say about it.

“He threw the ball great. He got a little cramp, felt it, and to his credit, said something about it. He said he could’ve kept going. But it didn’t make sense in the moment. So we’ll evaluate it.”

As for Merrill, he twice put the Padres in front -- first with a solo homer off Yankees ace Max Fried in the fourth, then with an RBI single in the eighth. He’s returned from the IL with four hits in his first eight at-bats.

“He stayed mentally into the competition away from the competition,” Shildt said. “He locked in, did his scouting reports almost every day to keep your mind ready. He took his physical rehab seriously and was able to come back and perform like he has.”

The Padres scored another in the eighth on Xander Bogaerts’ sacrifice fly. But Trent Grisham -- who went from San Diego to New York in the Juan Soto trade and was subsequently replaced by Merrill in center field -- tied the game immediately with a two-run shot.

That was the story of the series, really. In all three games, the team leading at the seventh-inning stretch went on to lose.

“We punch, they punch, we punch, they punch -- and they got the final one in, in this game at least,” Shildt said. “Good series, good baseball.”

That final punch was J.C. Escarra’s walk-off sacrifice fly in the bottom of the 10th. The Padres loaded the bases in the top half on Merrill’s hit-by-pitch, but Williams struck out Bogaerts to end the inning.

“Close games all around,” Merrill said. “Can’t really look back at it. We’ve got another series ahead of us [at Colorado]. We’ll put this one behind us and keep going.”

Presumably, they’ll do so with an exhale, if they can put those injury concerns behind them as well.