But when Maddux and Tribe ace C.C. Sabathia met Sunday afternoon at Progressive Field, Sabathia had a little more in the tank. With eight strong innings of work and plenty of offensive backing in his back pocket, Sabathia led the Tribe to a 7-3 victory over the Padres to give Cleveland its second consecutive series win.

Maddux blinked first in this battle of Cy Young Award winners. His throwing error on a routine grounder back to the mound in the third inning opened the door to a big inning. Jamey Carroll was plunked by a pitch with two outs, and Ben Francisco brought everybody home with a three-run homer to left to make it 3-0.

Sabathia didn't waste much time coughing up that lead. In the fourth, Justin Huber's RBI double, Khalil Greene's RBI single and Michael Barrett's sacrifice fly knotted it up.

But the Indians showed a lot of aggressiveness early in the count against Maddux all afternoon, and it paid off more and more as the game wore on. In the fourth, Shin-Soo Choo led off with a double and later came in to score from third on a Casey Blake groundout. In the sixth, with two on and two out, Franklin Gutierrez came through with a single up the middle to bring in another run and make it 5-3.

The sixth was Maddux's last inning of work. He turned it over to Cla Meredith in the seventh, and Grady Sizemore's leadoff homer that inning broke this game open.

Sabathia went eight innings, allowing just the three runs on six hits with a walk and 10 strikeouts. With 1,238 career strikeouts now under his belt, Sabathia passed Charles Nagy (1,235) for fifth place on the club's all-time list.