Dylan Cease aimed to make history by pitching the second no-hitter in San Diego Padres history and got some encouragement from the man who threw the first one.
Cease had thrown 94 pitches through seven innings when Padres manager Mike Shildt looked at Joe Musgrove.
“Joe is like, ‘His stuff is pretty good,’” Shildt recalled. “Well, he’s thrown one. He knows what this looks like. We let him ride.”
Cease used just nine pitches in the eighth inning and 11 in the ninth to complete a 3-0 win over the Washington Nationals on Thursday, securing a three-game sweep.
Two years ago, Cease was one out away from a no-hitter when he gave up a single to his current teammate Luis Arráez. This time, he retired Ildemaro Vargas and Jacob Young with groundouts for the first two outs of the ninth, then got CJ Abrams to hit a flyout to right field on a 1-0 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 said.
“I didn’t like it off the bat. It looked very hitterish, but fortunately fate’s on my side today.”
Cease (10-8) struck out nine and walked three in his third complete game in 145 big league starts. He threw a career-high 114 pitches in a game that also had a 1-hour, 16-minute rain delay in the first inning.
“The first inning, he comes in and says ‘I’m not quite there,’” Shildt recalled. “The second inning, ‘Getting there.’ Then the third inning, he just hit his stride.”
Musgrove threw the Padres’ first no-hitter against Texas on April 9, 2021. Houston’s Ronel Blanco had the only other no-hitter this season, against Toronto on April 1.
Cease was also close to a no-hitter with the Chicago White Sox against Minnesota on September 3, 2022, but Arráez lined a single to right-center on a 1-1 slider.
