Next game: Sunday, Sept. 7 vs. San Diego
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Postgame Audio
• Ned Yost
• Ben Sheets
• Prince Fielder

When two aces like Ben Sheets and Jake Peavy match up, you expect to get a pitcher's duel and that's exactly what happened Saturday night.

Sheets (13-7) needed only one run to lead the Brewers to a 1-0 win over the Padres at Miller Park. Milwaukee's ace threw a five-hit shutout with seven strikeouts.

"Wow," said Brewers manager Ned Yost. "I mean really, really, really good. Pitch count was down. Enabling to send him back in the ninth inning."

The Padres picked up two hits in the ninth but Sheets was able to get Will Venable to ground out to the end the game. Sheets was coming off a game in which he had to leave after five innings due to a right groin injury. He showed no signs of that injury as he threw his third shutout of the season which is tied for the lead in the National League with teammate CC Sabathia.

"Stuff was alright," Sheets said. "We located really well, mixed it up, threw everything. (Brewers catcher) Jason (Kendall) did a great job of calling pitches."

After two seasons with 12 wins and three seasons with 11 wins, Sheets has finally won 13 games in a season. His now five shutouts put second in the NL in that category behind Sabathia.

There was a little bit of a scare for Sheets after the second inning when he grounded out to Peavy to end the frame. Some of Sheets' fingers went numb and he had trouble regaining feeling at the start of the third inning.

"If you ever played baseball and got one of those real stingers in your fingers, it hurts so bad from your fingers," Yost said. "It makes you want to throw up and that's what happened. He hit off the end of the bat and his hand was totally numb and he had no feeling in his fingers. It took him a few throws to get his feeling back."

Sheets airmailed his first warm up for the third inning and home plate umpire Fieldin Culbreth knew something was wrong. Culbreth gave Sheets some extra time to work things out and eventually Sheets was able to get feeling back and pitched the rest of the game.

Peavy (9-10) was almost as good as he pitched seven innings and gave up just one run. But, he was charged with the loss for his efforts. Peavy struck out five but did walk four batters during his outing in which he allowed five hits.

"Any time you have a guy like that pitching, it's going to be a low scoring game," said Brewers first baseman Prince Fielder. "We're just glad that Ben was able to be just be one run better tonight, be able to have a complete game."

The Brewers scored the first and only run of the game in the third inning when Fielder hit a double over the head of Padres right fielder Brian Giles. The ball landed at the base of the wall and Giles relayed to second baseman Matt Antonelli who almost threw the ball into the first base stands. Ryan Braun was able to score and Fielder went to third on the error by Antonelli.

The win improved the Brewers record to 82-60 and clinched the team's second straight winning season. Milwaukee went 83-79 last season.

"This wasn't one of our goals when we came into the season to play .500 baseball," Yost said. "It was nice to do it in the first week of September."

It appeared the Padres were going to tie the score at 1 in the fourth inning when Chase Headley hit a shot up the middle with Luis Rodriguez on second base. But, Rickie Weeks made a fantastic play to dive and stop the ball from going into the outfield. Weeks then got up and threw out Headley to end the frame.

"That's the best play I've ever seen Rickie make," Yost said. "That was a great athletic play that's been years and years in the making. Rickie's worked really hard to get to the point where he can make that play. And if you seen Rickie's reaction after the play, you know that he felt good about it."

The final game of the four-game series is Sunday with southpaw Manny Parra (10-6, 4.10) on the hill for the Brewers against Chris Young (4-5, 4.91) for San Diego.

Notes: Rodriguez (3-4) and Chase Headley (2-4) had all five of the Padres' hits on the night. Corey Hart and Kendall had their 11-game and 10-game hitting streaks snapped. The game lasted two hours and seven minutes which is the shortest home game of the season.