In one of the first major moves of the offseason, the Toronto Blue Jays and Dylan Cease agreed on Wednesday to a seven-year, $210 million deal, league sources told The Athletic. The deal will take him through his age-36 season, which is probably more like a five-year deal that’s spread out to minimize the luxury tax hit, given how volatile pitchers’ long-term outlooks are for health and effectiveness.
With Cease, Toronto is getting durability, and perhaps the Blue Jays think they can unlock some untapped potential that the San Diego Padres couldn’t, but only once in his career has he pitched like the guy they seem to be paying.
Cease finished second in the American League Cy Young race in the 2022 season, when he posted a 2.20 ERA and his slider was the best pitch in the majors, but since then, he hasn’t come close to those heights. He did finish fourth in National League Cy Young balloting in 2024 with a 3.47 ERA.
He is very durable, never missing a start since reaching the majors in 2019 and making 162 starts over the five full years since the pandemic, and there’s huge value in providing those innings, even in years when he’s been a league-average pitcher or below.
The AL champs return Kevin Gausman and José Berríos, who made a combined 62 starts in 2025, but there’s uncertainty through the rest of their rotation. Shane Bieber will be back, but his workload could be limited in his first full year back after Tommy John surgery. Trey Yesavage flashed his potential in October, but as he goes around the league and hitters get more looks at him, his performance is likely to dip and he’ll have to make further adjustments.
Cease allows the Jays to be more flexible with those last two guys, since there’s a good chance their top three starters (by innings) will be taking every turn.
The 29-year-old’s production, however, may not be what the Jays are hoping to get. He has underperformed his peripherals for much of his career, meaning his ERAs have been higher than you would expect based on some of his other metrics, like his strikeout and walk rates. That has happened in four of the last five years, with the 2022 season being the one time he actually outperformed his underlying stats.
Though for many pitchers this is a matter of luck, randomness or the performances of other players like their defense or relievers, Cease is consistently worse pitching from the stretch, which means hitters perform better against him with men on base. He has also had a small but persistent platoon split, as his best pitch has always been his slider — although before he had Tommy John surgery in high school, it was a curveball, so he seems to spin the ball pretty easily regardless of pitch type — and he has barely used a changeup.
Maybe the Jays think they can improve that pitch or give him a splitter, which would resolve the second problem, but the difficulty with men on base is a tougher nut to crack.
Toronto should be spending aggressively this offseason, as it was two outs and one very bad pitch away from winning the World Series. The Jays will likely see a big revenue bump this winter and next year off the afterglow of a tremendous 2025 season.
Maybe spreading out Cease’s contract over more years leaves them with more flexibility to acquire another bat or retain Bo Bichette, and the Jays will just worry about the out years in Cease’s deal if and when we get there. I’m more lukewarm on this deal than down on it, since it’s really just money and I know Rogers has plenty of it. As long as the Jays are realistic about what Cease can give them, they can plan accordingly for the rest of the winter.
I had Cease ninth on my ranking of free agents this winter, tops among right-handed pitchers and third among all pitchers. I do think this sets a bar that Framber Valdez and Ranger Suarez should try to clear, as I’d rather have either of those guys than Cease in the abstract, and now the best remaining free-agent starter after those two is Merrill Kelly or Zac Gallen, neither of whom is close to their caliber. It all makes the Boston Red Sox’s trade for a year of Sonny Gray look even smarter than it did at the time they made it (one whole day ago).