After losing no-hit bid in 7th inning, Padres pitcher Dylan Cease exits with forearm cramp

NEW YORK (AP) — Dylan Cease was dominant for six innings. And then moments later, he was done for the night.

Soon after losing a no-hit bid in the seventh, the San Diego Padres pitcher left his start against the New York Yankees with a cramp in his right forearm Wednesday.

“It basically made my hand close tight for a couple of seconds. I don’t think it’s anything too serious,” Cease said after the Yankees rallied for a 4-3 victory in 10 innings. “I honestly was going to throw some warmup pitches and see, but I think the smart thing was to do what we did there.”

Cody Bellinger homered into the second deck in right field on an 0-2 fastball clocked at 98 mph with one out in the seventh for New York’s first hit.

Cease then struck out Anthony Volpe and got ahead 1-2 in the count against Jasson Domínguez before manager Mike Shildt and a Padres athletic trainer went to the Yankee Stadium mound.

“To his credit, he said something about it,” Shildt said. “Said he could have kept going but it didn’t make sense at the moment, so we’ll evaluate and see what happens.”

Cease nodded his head repeatedly during the discussion on the mound and ultimately walked off the field with the trainer and into the dugout.

“We did all the testing. Nothing hurts or anything. It was just my hand locked up for a couple seconds and let go,” Cease said. “I obviously would have liked to have kept going, but I think it was the right call.”

Jason Adam was given all the time he needed to warm up, and was credited with the strikeout when Domínguez went down looking to end the inning.

After the game, Shildt said Cease exited with a cramp in his right forearm.

“I don’t have any worry about my arm, to be honest. I guess you never know, but I’m not in any pain or anything. I’m really not worried about it,” Cease said. “It was just kind of like a weird thing.”

Cease, who pitched the second no-hitter in San Diego history last July at Washington, threw 59 of his 89 pitches for strikes and whiffed star slugger Aaron Judge all three times they squared off.

The right-hander struck out a season-best nine and walked two in a season-high 6 2/3 innings. Another batter reached on catcher’s interference.

“Legitimate no-hit stuff,” Shildt said. “It was going to be a read-it-and-react situation.”

Cease is 1-2 with a 4.91 ERA in eight starts this season. He left with the score tied 1-all.

“I’ve been working on some mechanical stuff and it hadn’t been clicking,” Cease said. “Then today it finally clicked and got to the point where I was able to kind of just focus on my target and throw it. I’ve been searching for that for a while now, so it definitely feels good to be back closer to what I should be.”

Cease was acquired from the Chicago White Sox for a package of four players in a March 2024 trade. He finished second in the 2022 AL Cy Young Award balloting and fourth in NL voting last year after going 14-11 with a 3.47 ERA in 33 starts during his first season with the Padres.

There have been 12 no-hitters pitched at Yankee Stadium, including Don Larsen’s perfect game for New York in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Eight no-hitters have been thrown against the Yankees — six in New York. Four of those came since the team began playing at Yankee Stadium in 1923. The most recent was a combined effort by Houston pitchers Cristian Javier, Héctor Neris and Ryan Pressly on June 25, 2022.

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AP freelance writer Larry Fleisher contributed to this report.

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