The San Diego Padres saw their six-game winning streak come to an end yesterday as they were shut down by Cleveland Guardians starter Joey Castillo and a trio of relievers in a 6-1 loss.
The Padres managed just a single hit, a bouncing single from Jake Cronenworth that sparked a brief rally to get San Diego on the board. Cronenworth’s hit came after a walk to Fernando Tatis Jr., and a double-play grounder from Manny Machado got Tatis home,
But the Guardians quickly tied it up on an RBI double from Jo Adell off opener Wandy Peralta, and that was as good as it got for the Padres. Patrick Bailey singled home a run the next inning off Kyle Hart to give Cleveland a 2-1 lead, and the Guardians didn’t look back after that, as they scored a pair of runs in the fifth and two more in the seventh to pull away and get the win.
The Padres got just that lone hit, and it was the third time they’ve been one-hit his season, according to a follow-up piece from Brian Dulik of MLB.com.
“We’ve got to flush this one quickly and move on to tomorrow,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “We’ll come back and try and win the series.”
The loss dropped the Padres back into a three-way tie with the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Philadelphia Phillies in the wild-card race as they managed just five base runners in the contest.
Cleveland’s strategy wasn’t hard to figure out, either. The Padres have been a team average of .271 since the beginning of July, which is the highest in baseball, and the Guardians pitchers flipped the script by throwing a steady diet of breaking balls.
Cantillo threw just 18 fastballs in 87 pitches, per Dulik, and that produced a strikeout rate of 50 percent.
“We’ve hit the fastball well all year,” Cronenworth said. “But I don’t think I saw one all night. [Cantillo] threw a lot of changeups for strikes.”
Gavin Williams tried the same approach for Cleveland on Friday, but he couldn’t throw strikes. Next up for the Guardians is Tanner Bibee, who throws his four-seamer just over 22 percent of the time, so San Diego can expect more of the same today.
“Maybe that’s something we can use tomorrow against Bibee,” Stammen said about Cleveland’s approach. “We’ll find out in the first inning, I guess.
“Cantillo definitely kept us off-balance with cutters and changeups, just like Williams. Maybe we can take a little bit of credit for getting them to use a different strategy.”