MILWAUKEE - It was everything the pitching matchup suggested it would be.
And, for the Milwaukee Brewers, even more.
San Diego ace Jake Peavy blinked just once, but that was enough because Ben Sheets stared down the Padres in pitching the Brewers to a 1-0 victory Saturday night at Miller Park.
"It lived up to what it was supposed to be tonight," said Brewers third baseman Craig Counsell, who stood out in what became a defensive highlight film for a team not known for its glove work.
"Both guys were on top of their games."
Sheets scattered five hits for his third shutout of the season and fifth complete game. He walked just one and struck out seven - including Padres cleanup hitter Adrian Gonzalez three times - to post his career-high 13th victory against seven losses.
The victory allowed the Brewers to stretch their National League wild-card lead to 4<SUP>1</SUP>/<SUB>2</SUB> games over the Philadelphia Phillies, who were rained out in New York. They remained four games behind first-place Chicago in the Central Division after the Cubs won in Cincinnati to snap a six-game losing streak.
The Sheets-Peavy matchup was a repeat of an Aug. 14 game in San Diego in which neither team scored for six innings. The Brewers scored once in the seventh in that game, but the Padres answered with three runs in the bottom of the inning and went on to a 3-2 victory.
"(Sheets) didn't let it happen tonight," said manager Ned Yost, whose team clinched its second consecutive winning season but has bigger fish to fry.
Sheets had no recurrence of the groin tightness that shortened his previous outing to five innings but still had a health scare after the bottom of the second inning. When Sheets hit a tapper off the end of the bat back to Peavy, the vibration made some of the fingers go numb on his pitching hand.
Sheets crouched in front of the mound, waiting for the feeling to return. After a few anxious minutes and some errant warm-up tosses, the numbness went away and he resumed his masterpiece.
"My fingers went numb," said Sheets. "It took a pretty long time to get the feeling in them. I've gotten 'stung' before but never that bad."
The Brewers needed a break to score off Peavy and they got it in the third inning. With two down, Ryan Braun hit a tapper to the right of the mound that Peavy came in and fielded, but he threw low to first and Gonzalez couldn't handle it.
Terfra1 
