By Bill Center, The Sports Xchange

SAN DIEGO - For the first time as a member of Los Angeles Dodgers, left-hander Alex Wood completed seven innings Saturday night against the Padres at Petco Park.

More importantly, they were seven shutout innings as the Dodgers blanked San Diego 2-0 to win for the 10th time in 12 starts and move to 19 games over .500 for the first time this season.

And more important, it was how Wood worked the sixth inning that impressed Dodgers manager Don Mattingly.

Padres right fielder Matt Kemp opened the sixth with his second single. But Wood picked Kemp off first before throwing a full-count pitch to Justin Upton.

"That was pretty nice," Mattingly said of the pick-off of Kemp. "With Justin up there, you worry about him in a one-run game (the Dodgers were leading 1-0) with a 3-and-2 count. Anything can happen. That was a big out for us."

And after Wood picked off Kemp - who was originally called safe at first with the call reversed upon appeal by Mattingly - he struck out Upton on the next pitch.

"That was a big inning," said Wood of the sixth. "Two turning points, getting Kemp and striking out Upton, two outs in a matter of 30 seconds."

With the sixth out of the way, Mattingly let Wood go back out for the seventh against the bottom of the Padres order.

"It was the right part of the order as much as anything," said Mattingly. "Those guys were a good match for him and him being out there kept their lefties on the bench."

Wood allowed three hits, four walks and hit a batter with four strikeouts over seven innings as he won a pitching duel with Padres right-handed starter Tyson Ross.

Wood improved to 3-3 with the Dodgers (and 10-9 overall) as he combined with right-handers Chris Hatcher and Kenley Jansen on a three-hit shutout.

The Padres were shut out for the major league-leading 17th time this season. They were shut out 19 times in 2014.

Ross (10-10) allowed one run on five hits and two walks with three strikeouts in six innings despite not having his trademark slider.

"He pitched six strong innings without one of the best sliders in baseball," said Padres manager Pat Murphy.

Ross agreed with that assessment.

"I didn't have my best stuff tonight, but I kind of grinded it out and just tried to keep us in there," said Ross. "Sometimes you have the slider and sometimes you don't. It's usually a big weapon for me, but tonight I really didn't have it going at any point. I just had to find ways around it."

Offensively, right fielder Andre Ethier was most of the show for the Dodgers.

The right fielder, who had missed the past two nights after fouling a ball off his right knee Wednesday night, reached base in his first four plate appearances and scored both Dodgers runs. Ethier reached base to lead off four different innings - doubling in both the second and fourth, singling in the sixth and drawing a lead-off walk in the eighth.

Ethier opened the fourth with a double to right center and scored on left fielder Carl Crawford's ensuing ground-rule double to right to break the scoreless tie.

After drawing a walk from Padres right-handed reliever Joaquin Benoit leading off the eighth, Ethier raced home from second when center fielder Joc Pederson dropped a two-out, opposite-field, pop-fly single into left.

Kemp had two of the Padres three hits to stretch his on-base streak to 25 straight games.

NOTES: Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said OF Yaisel Puig could miss the rest of the regular season with the right hamstring pull that put him on the disabled list on Aug. 28. ... Mattingly said RHP Zack Greinke and LHP Clayton Kershaw would start the first two games against the Angels Monday and Tuesday. ... RHP Josh Johnson, who felt pain in his elbow and forearm Friday night just four pitches into a scheduled 25-pitch rehab assignment with Single-A Lake Elsinore returned to San Diego on Saturday to have his twice reconstructed elbow examined. Friday night was Johnson's first appearance in a game in his two seasons with the Padres.