Dylan Cease coughs up early lead, Padres fall to Giants

SAN DIEGO — The top wild-card team in the NL, the Padres control their own destiny.

A little more breathing room would be nice.

Dylan Cease coughed up an early lead and a lineup missing Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill squandered opportunity after opportunity in a 6-3 loss to the San Francisco Giants on Saturday, costing the Padres a prime opportunity to improve their postseason position.

The Diamondbacks, after all, have lost three in a row only to see the Padres give up a lead for their second loss in three days.

The Padres still have a 1 1/2-game lead on Arizona in the race for the NL’s top wild-card spot, but the race is as tight as ever with the Mets, winners of nine in a row, leapfrogging the Braves to move into the third wild-card spot, a half-game behind Arizona and two games behind the Padres.

Which makes stranding seven runners and bouncing in three double plays all the more frustrating in a game that was winnable, even with a scheduled off-day for Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill sitting with a left knee bruise.

The sinker-balling Webb, naturally, fetched all three twin-killings and the Giants’ bullpen retired fetched the final nine outs despite Tatis leading off the ninth with a double off closer Ryan Walker.

Merrill grounded out as a pinch-hitter, Donovan Solano flied out to center — also as a pinch-hitter — and Luis Arraez flied out to left to leave Tatis at second base.

Webb let himself off an early hook.

Luis Arraez and Jurickson Profar opened the game with singles, Jake Cronenworth worked a walk to load the bases and Manny Machado singled to center to plate the game’s first run.

A good start, to be sure.

But Xander Bogaerts traded two outs for a run on his ensuing grounder to second and the Padres settled for just two runs after loading the bases to start the game against last year’s NL Cy Young runner-up.

The Padres scratched across another run in the fifth inning on Luis Arraez’s third hit of the game, but still walked away from Saturday’s game lamenting missed opportunities.

Cronenworth bounce into an inning-ending double play in the second inning, Bogaerts left the bases loaded in that fifth inning on a bouncer to shortstop and Mason McCoy’s sixth-inning comebacker allowed Webb to start an inning-ending double play with two on in a 4-3 game.

Webb allowed 10 hits, but only Tyler Wade’s fifth-inning double went for extra bases. He struck out three and walked two in escaping with a quality start.

Cease completed six innings for just the second time since his July 25 no-hitter, but he was not all that sharp until retiring the last seven hitters he faced.

By then he’d already allowed the Giants to erase a 2-0 lead on Grant McCray’s third-inning homer and add on via with the help of walks in the fourth inning via McCray’s bases-loaded double play.

Cease threw 61 of his 101 pitches for strikes, allowed six hits, walked two and struck out four.

The home run he allowed to McCray on a middle-middle slider was the first he’d given up since Aug. 17, but he also has a 5.01 ERA over his last six starts.

The 23-year-old McCray added a two-run homer in the ninth off Yuki Matsui to turn a 4-3 lead into a three-run cushion, dampening the prospect for heroics in the bottom of the inning.

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