Padres storm back on Cubs to remain perfect at home

Jeff Sanders, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Apr 15, 2025

Published in Baseball

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The pitching staff’s scoreless streak wasn’t going to go on and on and on. The Padres are not going to win every home game this season, either.

That’s what logic says.

But there’s something else powering Mike Shildt’s team these days.

A freshly-shaven Dylan Cease buckled, the Cubs halted the staff’s scoreless streak at 37 innings … and the Padres still battled back for a 10-4 win to remain perfect at home in front of a crowd 47,078, the third-largest in Petco Park history.

It had quite a lot to cheer, from Fernando Tatis Jr.’s first multi-homer game of the season, to nine runs over the final three innings, to an 11-0 home record that’s propped up baseball’s best team to start 2025. That’s tied for the fifth-longest streak at home to ever start a season. The 1907 New York Giants hold the record with 15 straight wins.

The Padres’ 14-3 start is tied with the 1998 NL pennant-winner for the best in franchise history.

Tatis’ third home run in four days since his shoulder scare plated the game’s first run. It would have been much cleaner to say his second blast of the game bookended the rally, but Luis Arraez followed Tatis’ eighth-inning homer with the three-time batting champ’s second home run of the year and Jose Iglesias added an RBI groundout to cap the Padres’ third-straight multi-run inning.

In between all that, the Padres nickeled and dimed their way to their second win over the NL Central-leading Cubs in four meetings.

Infield singles from Iglesias and Jason Heyward tied the game at 3-3 in the sixth, a wild-pitch with the bases loaded gave the Padres a lead in the seventh and Gavin Sheets’ two-run single added insurance.

Jason Adam replaced Adrián Morejón in the eighth and coughed up a run to snap the bullpen’s scoreless streak at 10 innings, but Elias Díaz walked to lead off the bottom of the inning and Tatis logged his third triple-digit exit velocity of the game.

First, Tatis sent a 100-mph lineout to third. Then he sent a 108-mph homer over the wall in left off Cubs starter Jameson Taillon (5⅔ IP, 2 ER). The two-run homer off reliever Eli Morgan to left center in the eighth went out on a 111-mph line.

Following three straight shutouts of the Rockies, Cease ran the team’s scoreless streak to 37 innings — three shy of the 1984 team record — before Machado cracked the door open in the fourth inning by booting Justin Turner’s leadoff grounder.

Michael Busch followed with a home run to right to immediately erase the advantage provided on Tatis’ solo homer half-inning earlier. Two more doubles that inning, one from Nico Hoerner and one from Pete Crow-Armstrong, pushed the Cubs’ lead to 3-0.

Cease stranded two runners in the fifth inning and exited an inning later after Hoerner’s third hit of the game, a single with two outs in the sixth.

Cease was coming off a career-high nine runs allowed in his last start against the A’s in Sacramento. Two days later, he showed up in the Padres’ clubhouse at Petco Park looking to flush that start along with every single whisker from the mountain-man growth he carried into the season.

So Monday’s start was certainly better.

Cease struck out six and was charged with three runs — two earned — on seven hits and a walk over 5⅔ innings after Alek Jacob stranded an inherited runner in the sixth.

Cease threw 63 of his 96 pitches for strikes.

The game-tying rally a half-inning after Cease’s exit began with Machado’s one-out walk. Then Sheets’ high fly ball fell in front of left fielder Ian Happ for a single, Xander Bogaerts walked to load the bases and Iglesias’ swinging bunt plated a run and kept the bases loaded.

Heyward followed with a single off shortstop Dansby Swanson’s glove as he attempted a diving stop behind second base, tying the game at 3-3.

The Padres weren’t done.

Tatis walked to lead off the seventh, Arraez doubled down the first-base line and an intentional walk of Machado loaded the bases for Sheets.

That brought the sold-out crowd to a fever pitch as it chanted “Holy Sheets! Holy Sheets!” but a wild pitch somewhat robbed him of a moment as Tatis scampered home.