Tatís homers, Cease strikes out 10 as Padres blank Giants 5-0

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Fernando Tatís Jr. hit a two-run homer, Dylan Cease struck out 10 in six shutout innings and the San Diego Padres beat the San Francisco Giants 5-0 on Friday night.

The Padres are a half-game ahead of the Diamondbacks atop the National League wild card standings and 1 1/2 games in front of the Mets for the third and final wild card spot. The Giants have lost three of four and were shut out in back-to-back games for the first time this season.

Luis Arráez had three hits and a walk on Friday, extending his streak to 129 consecutive at bats without a strikeout. It’s the longest since Juan Pierre went 147 at bats without a strikeout in 2004.

Cease (13-11) recorded his 1,000th career strikeout in the third inning when he got Donovan Walton looking. He held the Giants to four hits and two walks, and also got some help from defense in the sixth when Tatís and Jake Cronenworth combined to cut down Heliot Ramos at the plate on a double by Patrick Bailey. The 28-year-old got his first win since Aug. 17.

“It means a lot,” Cease said of getting to the 1,000 mark. “Longevity and execution and performance and all that good stuff, but just happy we won. I feel like I haven’t contributed in like a month. So it feels nice to contribute.”

Padres manager Mike Shildt said Cease was “electric.”

“I thought his stuff was really good,” Shildt said. “Around the zone, a lot of life, ball up, secondary was good. A lot of strikes out of the hand. Anytime there was a miss, it was a quick adjustment. I thought it was fantastic to get through six and keep them shut out.”

San Diego scored three times in the first inning off Logan Webb (12-10). Tatís homered to center field after Arráez led off the game with a single. Xander Bogaerts drove in Manny Machado with an RBI double later in the inning.

“He's just driving balls,” Shildt said of Tatís. “He looks like he’s in a good place ... That’s a good sign when he’s driving the ball to the middle of the field, using the gaps.”

Webb gave up a fourth run in the fourth when he threw wildly to first on a comebacker by Elias Díaz, allowing Jackson Merrill to score from second. He exited after the fourth after allowing seven hits, striking out four and walking one while throwing 83 pitches.

It was the first time in 22 games that Webb has not pitched at least five innings.

“They’re one of the better (batting) average teams in baseball, if not the best,” Webb said. “I’m a contact guy. My job is to try to limit damage and I didn’t do that."

Giants manager Bob Melvin said that Webb has been taxed this season. He leads all of baseball with 193.2 innings pitched.

“Just a tough first inning, throws the ball away,” Melvin said. “It was time to just give him a little bit of a break. (To) keep pushing him in a 4-0 game with the innings that he’s pitched, sometimes even a guy like him needs a break.”

TRAINER’S ROOM

Padres: IF Ha-Seong Kim (right shoulder inflammation), whose recovery has been shaky, was scheduled to throw on Friday but manager Mike Shildt said that Kim has “gone back a little bit in his throwing intensity.”

Giants: IF Tyler Fitzgerald (lower back tightness) has no structural damage in his lower back after undergoing an MRI. The shortstop is considered day-to-day after leaving Thursday’s game early, and manager Bob Melvin said he isn’t expected to go on the IL. … LHP Robbie Ray (left hamstring strain) is scheduled to throw a bullpen this weekend. … RHP Randy Rodriguez (right elbow inflammation) threw a bullpen on Thursday and is scheduled for another on Sunday.

UP NEXT

RHP Mason Black (0-3, 7.50 ERA) is scheduled to pitch for the Giants in the second game of the series, opposite RHP Joe Musgrove (5-5, 4.64 ERA) for the Padres.

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

San Diego Padres catcher Elias Díaz, right, waits to tag out San Francisco Giants' Heliot Ramos at home during the sixth inning of a baseball game in San Francisco, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

San Diego Padres' Brandon Lockridge, from left, celebrates with Jackson Merrill and Fernando Tatis Jr. after the Padres defeated the San Francisco Giants in a baseball game in San Francisco, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

San Diego Padres pitcher Dylan Cease works against the San Francisco Giants during the first inning of a baseball game in San Francisco, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

San Diego Padres' Fernando Tatis Jr., right, celebrates after hitting a two-run home run that also scored Luis Arraez (4) during the first inning of a baseball game against the San Francisco Giants in San Francisco, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

San Diego Padres right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr., middle, celebrates with teammates during the sixth inning of a baseball game against the San Francisco Giants in San Francisco, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

San Diego Padres' Fernando Tatis Jr., right, hits a two-run home run in front of San Francisco Giants catcher Patrick Bailey during the first inning of a baseball game in San Francisco, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

When she heard her front door open almost two years ago, Kostiantyn Zinovkin’s mother thought her son had returned home because he forgot something. Instead, men in balaclavas burst into the apartment in Melitopol, a southern Ukrainian city occupied by Russian forces.

They said Zinovkin was detained for a minor infraction and would be released soon. They used his key to enter, said his wife, Liusiena, and searched the flat so thoroughly that they tore it apart “into molecules.”

But Zinovkin wasn't released. Weeks after his May 2023 arrest, the Russians told his mother he was plotting a terrorist attack. He's now standing trial on charges his family calls absurd.

Zinovkin is one of thousands of civilians in Russian captivity. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy insists their release, along with prisoners of war, will be an important step toward ending the 3-year-old war.

So far, it hasn't appeared high on the agenda in U.S. talks with Moscow and Kyiv.

“While politicians discuss natural resources, possible territorial concessions, geopolitical interests and even Zelenskyy’s suit in the Oval Office, they’re not talking about people,” said Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.

In January, the center and other Ukrainian and Russian rights groups launched “People First,” a campaign that says any peace settlement must prioritize the release of everyone they say are captives, including Russians jailed for protesting the war, as well as Ukrainian children who were illegally deported.

“You can’t achieve sustainable peace without taking into account the human dimension,” Matviichuk told The Associated Press.

It's unknown how many Ukrainian civilians are in custody, both in occupied regions and in Russia. Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets in 2023 estimated over 20,000.

Matviichuk says her group received over 4,000 requests to help civilian detainees. She notes it's against international law to detain noncombatants in war.

Oleg Orlov, co-founder of the Russian rights group Memorial, says advocates know at least 1,672 Ukrainian civilians are in Moscow’s custody.

“There’s a larger number of them that we don’t know about,” added Orlov, whose organization won the Nobel alongside Matviichuk's group and is involved in People First.

Many are detained for months without charges and don't know why they're being held, Orlov said.

Russian soldiers detained Mykyta Shkriabin, then 19, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region in March 2022. He left the basement where his family was sheltering from fighting to get supplies and never returned.

Shkriabin was detained even though he wasn’t charged with a crime, said his lawyer, Leonid Solovyov. In 2023, the authorities began referring to him as a prisoner of war, a status Solovyov seeks to contest since the student wasn’t a combatant.

Shkriabin's mother, Tetiana, told AP last month she still doesn’t know where her son is held. In three years, she's received two letters from him saying he's doing well and that she shouldn't worry.

She's hoping for “a prisoner exchange, a repatriation, or something,” Shkriabina said. Without hope, "how does one hang in there?”

Others face charges that their relatives say are fabricated.

After being seized in Melitopol, Zinovkin was jailed for over two years and charged with seven offenses, including plotting a terrorist attack, assembling weapons and high treason, his wife Liusiena Zinovkina told AP, describing the charges as “absurd.”

While vocally pro-Ukrainian and against Russia's occupation, her husband couldn’t plot to bomb anyone and had no weapons skills, she said.

Especially nonsensical is the treason charge, she said, because Russian law stipulates that only its citizens can be charged with that crime, and Zinovkin has never held Russian citizenship, unless it was forced upon him in jail. A conviction could bring life in prison.

Ukrainian civilian Serhii Tsyhipa, 63, was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 13 years in a maximum-security prison after he disappeared in March 2022 while walking his dog in Nova Kakhovka in the partially occupied Kherson region, said his wife, Olena. The dog also vanished.

Tsyhipa, a journalist, was wearing a jacket with a large red cross sewn on it. Both he and his wife, Olena, had those jackets, she told AP, because they volunteered to distribute food and other essentials when Russian troops invaded.

Serhii Tsyhipa protested the occupation, and Olena believes that led to his arrest.

He was held for months in Crimea and finally charged with espionage in December 2022. Almost a year later, in October 2023, Tsyhipa was convicted and sentenced in a trial that lasted only three hearings.

He appealed, but his sentence was upheld. “But the Russian authorities must understand that we are fighting — that we are doing everything possible to bring him home,” she said.

Mykhailo Savva of the Expert Council of the Center for Civil Liberties said rights advocates know of 307 Ukrainian civilians convicted in Russia on criminal charges — usually espionage or treason, if the person held a Russian passport, but also terrorism and extremism.

He said that in Ukraine's occupied territories, Russians see activists, community leaders and journalists as "the greatest threat.”

Winning release for those already serving sentences would be an uphill battle, advocates say.

Relatives must piece together scraps of information about prison conditions.

Zinovkina said she has received letters from her husband who told her of problems with his sight, teeth and back. Former prisoners also told her of cramped, cold basement cells in a jail in Rostov, where he's being held.

She believes her husband was pressured to sign a confession. A man who met him in jail told her Kostiantyn “confessed to everything they wanted him to, so the worst is over” for him.

Orlov said Ukrainian POWs and civilians are known to be held in harsh conditions, where allegations of abuse and torture are common.

A recent report by the U.N. Human Rights Council's commission of inquiry on Ukraine said Russia “committed enforced disappearances and torture as crimes against humanity,” part of a "systematic attack against the civilian population and pursuant to a coordinated state policy.”

It said Russia “detained large numbers of civilians,” jailed them in occupied Ukraine or deported them to Russia, and “systematically used torture against certain categories of detainees to extract information, coerce, and intimidate.”

The Kremlin tested those methods during the two wars it waged in Chechnya in the 1990s and 2000s, well before invading Ukraine, said Orlov, who recently went to Ukraine to document Russia’s human rights violations and saw the pattern repeated from the North Caucasus conflicts.

“Essentially, a misanthropic system has been created, and everyone who falls into it ends up in hell,” added Matviichuk, the Ukrainian human rights advocate.

Russia's Defense Ministry, the Federal Penitentiary Service and the Federal Security Service did not respond to requests for comment.

As the U.S. talks about a ceasefire, relatives continue to press for the captives' release.

Liusiena Zinovkina says she hasn't abandoned hope as her husband, now 35, stands trial but is tempering her expectations.

“I see that it’s not as simple as the American president thought. It’s not that easy to come to an agreement with Russia,” she said, reminding herself “to be patient. It will happen, but not tomorrow.”

Olena Tsyhipa said every minute counts for her husband, whose health has deteriorated.

“My belief in his return is unwavering,” she said. “We just have to wait.”

Litvinova reported from Tallinn, Estonia. Arhirova reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Associated Press writer Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn contributed.

Liusiena Zinovkina, 32, sits in a park in Berlin, Germany, on March 19, 2025. Her husband, Kostiantyn, was arrested in Ukraine in May 2023 and remains in Russian custody. She left Ukraine after the war began. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Liusiena Zinovkina, 32, spends time in a park in Berlin, Germany, March 19, 2025. She fled to Germany from Ukraine, where her husband was arrested by invading Russian forces in May 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Liusiena Zinovkina, 32, reads a letter from her husband, Kostiantyn, in her room in Berlin, Germany, March 19, 2025. She fled to Germany from Ukraine, where her husband was arrested by invading Russian forces in May 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Olena Tsyhipa walks to her home in Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 3, 2025. Her husband, journalist and activist Serhii Tsyhipa, was imprisoned by the Russians in the early days of the war in Ukraine in 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Olena Tsyhipa looks at family photos in Kyiv, Ukraine, April 3, 2025. Her husband, journalist and activist Serhii Tsyhipa, was imprisoned by the Russians in the early days of the war in Ukraine in 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Olena Tsyhipa looks at family photos in Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 3, 2025. Her husband, journalist and activist Serhii Tsyhipa, was imprisoned by the Russians in the early days of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Olena Tsyhipa walks near a lake in Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 3, 2025. Her husband, journalist and activist Serhii Tsyhipa, was imprisoned by the Russians in the early days of the war in Ukraine in 2022. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

FILE - Oleg Orlov, the co-chair of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights group Memorial, listens to questions during an interview with The Associated Press in Berlin, Germany, Aug. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

FILE - Ukrainian Nobel laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk prepares to testify at the 'people's tribunal' where prosecutors symbolically put Russian President Vladimir Putin on trial for the crime of aggression in Ukraine in The Hague, Netherlands, Feb. 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File)

Liusiena Zinovkina, 32, sits in her room in Berlin, Germany, March 19, 2025. She fled to Germany from Ukraine, where her husband was arrested by invading Russian forces in May 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)