Looking to build off a World Series appearance, the Toronto Blue Jays are signing Dylan Cease to the largest pitching contract in franchise history. Cease, a durable right-hander coming off a down season by his standards, inked a seven-year, $210 million contract Wednesday, league sources told The Athletic.
Cease’s deal will include deferrals, which are expected to bring the present-value AAV to around $26 million a year, a league source told The Athletic. That post-deferral calculation is the number used in luxury-tax calculations.
With Max Scherzer and Chris Bassitt coming off the books, the Jays entered the winter looking to add a top starter. Cease, arguably, was the top arm on the market. All offseason, agents have described the Jays as aggressive, and this signing proves that early aggression.
Cease, who owns a 28.6 percent career strikeout rate since his 2019 debut, underwhelmed in his walk year with the San Diego Padres but still maintained some of the peripheral numbers of a frontline pitcher. Besides a 4.55 ERA, he struck out more than 200 batters for a fifth consecutive season and finished third in the majors with a 29.8 percent strikeout rate, behind Detroit’s Tarik Skubal and Boston’s Garrett Crochet.
His up-and-down performance came amid persistent trade rumors.
Acquired from the Chicago White Sox in March 2024, Cease spent much of last offseason and the following summer as a prime candidate to be moved. The Padres seriously explored that possibility at multiple junctures — in July, the Houston Astros showed particular interest — before San Diego ultimately opted to retain him.
That decision paid a brief dividend in October. Cease threw 3 2/3 scoreless innings in a wild-card-round elimination game against the Chicago Cubs, the organization that originally drafted him. The Padres’ season ended the next day, with little expectation that Cease would pitch for them again. After making $13.75 million in arbitration in 2025, the Scott Boras client declined a $22.025 million qualifying offer from San Diego and entered free agency as one of baseball’s top available starters.
Sometimes described as a right-handed version of two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, the walk-prone Cease remains capable of frustrating and exhilarating, often in the same outing. He threw the Padres’ second no-hitter in franchise history, against the Washington Nationals on July 25, 2024, capping a three-start stretch in which he went at least six innings and allowed no more than one hit.
A little more than two months later, he submitted a pair of postseason clunkers in a tightly contested National League Division Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 2025, a familiar lack of command made it difficult for Cease to harness his high-octane, largely two-pitch repertoire.
He also continued to demonstrate rare durability. More than a decade removed from Tommy John surgery, Cease has missed only one big-league start, when he was a late scratch at the end of his rookie season.
That durability is exactly what the Jays have prioritized in pitching acquistions in recent years, signing dependable starters like José BerrÃos, Kevin Gausman and Bassitt. With Shane Bieber coming off Tommy John surgery during Toronto’s 2025 pennant chase and Trey Yesavage reaching a career-high workload, reliable innings will be important for the Jays to survive potential injuries or innings limits in 2026.
If healthy, a rotation of Cease, Gausman, Bieber, Yesavage and BerrÃos may be among the best in baseball.