{"id":802657,"date":"2026-07-15T03:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T03:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/802657\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T03:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T03:02:09","slug":"blue-jays-dylan-cease-strikes-out-side-in-all-star-game-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/802657\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays’ Dylan Cease strikes out side in All-Star Game start"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dylan Cease<\/a> looked well-rested as he pitched a dominant first inning at the MLB All-Star Game on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The hard-throwing right-hander struck out the side against the top of the National League’s lineup after throwing an MLB season-high 118 pitches in his previous start with the Toronto Blue Jays<\/p>\n

Cease struck out Kyle Schwarber, Juan Soto and CJ Abrams, giving up a walk to the NL’s No. 3 hitter, Freddie Freeman, in between. <\/p>\n

“I always want to strike guys out,” Cease told Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi <\/a>after his outing. “… Before the game, I was kind of pondering, do I start out with a changeup? I thought it’d be funny. But (Justin) Verlander talked me out of it so we started off with a heater and I’m glad we did.” <\/p>\n

The Blue Jays<\/a> ace challenged Schwarber with three straight fastballs to start the bottom of the first and eventually got him to chase a low slider for strike three.<\/p>\n

Cease was mic’d up on the FOX Sports broadcast and was heard talking through his pitch selection, including a particularly nasty changeup to Soto.<\/p>\n

Soto then swung through a 98-m.p.h. heater on the outside edge, and looked bewildered by the pitch. <\/p>\n

The broadcast congratulated Cease on a good start after the second strikeout, to which he coyly responded “Thank you.” <\/p>\n

Cease threw 17 of his 25 pitches for strikes and got six whiffs on 15 swings.<\/p>\n

The Blue Jays’ marquee free-agent signing, Cease took a no-hitter into the ninth inning against the San Francisco Giants on July 8, before allowing a single to Heliot Ramos to start the frame. The 118 pitches were also a career high, surpassing the 114 he threw in his no-hitter with the San Diego Padres in 2024.<\/p>\n

Four days later, the Blue Jays announced that Cease would start the All-Star Game. The other leading candidate, New York Yankees righty Cam Schlittler, withdrew from pitching in the Midsummer Classic earlier the same day.<\/p>\n

But Toronto manager John Schneider, who also managed the American League team, said he would have chosen Cease regardless of Schlittler’s decision.<\/p>\n

Cease has a 2.56 ERA in 98.1 innings while racking up an AL-best 148 strikeouts. He also leads AL starters in WAR, as calculated by FanGraphs, at 3.7, checking in ahead of Schlittler (3.6) and Minnesota Twins ace Joe Ryan (3.1).<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old joined Dave Stieb (1983, 1984), David Wells (2000) and Roy Halladay (2009) as the only Blue Jays pitchers to start an All-Star Game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dylan Cease looked well-rested as he pitched a dominant first inning at the MLB All-Star Game on Tuesday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":802658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-802657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/802658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}