Few MLB pitchers are more frustrating than Dylan Cease. When he’s on, Cease looks like a future Hall of Famer and perennial Cy Young award contender. When he’s off, he looks like a back-end starter incapable of finding the zone.
The Toronto Blue Jays are betting that the “on” version is Cease’s true form. Cease reportedly agreed to a seven-year, $210 million deal with Toronto on Wednesday, according to Jon Heyman of the New York Post.
Cease, 29, entered free agency coming off a down season. In his walk year with the San Diego Padres, Cease posted a 4.55 ERA over 168 innings. He still struck out batters in bunches, racking up 215 strikeouts, but also walked 71, one of the highest totals in the majors.
That performance is the perfect encapsulation of Cease’s MLB career, which has featured exhilarating highs and maddeningly-frustrating lows.
When Cease is on, he’s one of the best pitchers in baseball. Armed with some of the nastiest pitches in the game, Cease racks up strikeouts at an elite rate. Since becoming a full-time starter in 2021, Cease has never had a season with fewer than 214 strikeouts. He’s also proved to be incredibly durable. Over that same period, Cease ranks seventh with 884 innings pitched. Cease walks more batters than most pitchers, but is typically able to lean on his phenomenal stuff to work out of those self-inflicted jams.
When all of that comes together — like it did in 2022 and 2024 — Cease is capable of putting up seasons worthy of the Cy Young award. He didn’t win the award either season, but finished second in 2022 after putting up a 2.20 ERA over 184 innings and finished fourth in 2024 after posting a 3.47 ERA in 189 1/3 innings.
When Cease struggles — like he did in 2023 and 2025 — it doesn’t look pretty. Cease’s control is among the worst in the majors. He routinely ranks near the top of the league in walks allowed, and has walked at least 65 batters in each of his past five seasons. While he can occasionally make up for that with strikeouts, that’s a fine line to walk. And in the seasons where Cease has struggled, it’s often because he failed to get the inning-ending strikeout he needed after putting multiple batters on base.
Home runs can also be a problem for Cease. When he doesn’t command the ball well, that leads to poorly-located pitches in the heart of the plate. In both 2023 and 2025, Cease posted home run per fly ball rates over 10 percent. Given his struggles with walks, Cease is at more risk than other pitchers to give up multi-run homers, which sinks his ERA. To that end, Cease posted a 4.58 ERA in 2023 and a 4.55 ERA in 2025. Both figures were below the league average those seasons.
Since 2022, Cease has alternated between excellent and poor seasons. The Blue Jays will have to hope that trend continues in 2026, when Cease is “due” for a good season. Baseball doesn’t work that way, of course, but Cease has always been the type of pitcher who seems one tweak away from consistent dominance.
That’s been the case for Cease’s entire MLB career, but maybe Toronto will finally be the team to turn Cease into the best version of himself. They’ll wager quite a bit of money to find out, but Cease’s upside is well worth it if the Blue Jays succeed.
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