Dylan Cease, in many ways, is a stereotypical Toronto Blue Jays pitching acquisition. The contract may be longer than usual, and the price point is eye-popping, but Cease is essentially a conglomeration of what general manager Ross Atkins and the Jays often target in free agent starters: dependability and strikeout upside.
The obvious fit is likely why the Jays jumped the market, signing Cease for seven years and a partially deferred $210 million hours before American Thanksgiving. It’s why the Jays targeted him above every other arm in free agency and were willing to look beyond Cease’s inconsistency to award him with the largest free-agent contract in franchise history.
Cease’s 4.55 ERA and 1.1 WAR in 2025 do not seem to warrant the seventh-largest pitching contract in baseball history. On the surface, Cease was much closer to Kyle Hendricks than Cy Young votes last year. Yet, looking at Toronto’s record of recent pitching acquisitions, it’s clear why the Blue Jays bet big.
Like José Berríos, Chris Bassitt and Kevin Gausman before, Cease’s top trait is consistently taking the ball. Those four starters represent four of the five largest pitching contracts Atkins has handed out during his Toronto tenure, and each ranks within baseball’s innings-pitched leaders since 2021. Cease hasn’t missed a start since his 2019 rookie season.
Most innings pitched since 2021
While previous health isn’t exactly predictive of future health, Cease’s durability (alongside the physical he must still pass to finalize his contract), provides Toronto with as much confidence as possible moving forward. Luck and randomness will impact how often Cease can take the mound for the Jays over the next seven seasons, but there is also a level of talent to pitching every five days.
Berríos and Bassitt take immense pride in regularly starting games. The two pitched through injuries during the second half of the 2025 season, helping the Jays navigate a playoff push without significant rotation depth. That’s why the Jays bet on durable pitchers, and Cease is seemingly built in the same mold.
With Shane Bieber coming off Tommy John recovery and Trey Yesavage setting a new workload high in 2025, adding more dependable pitching will help Toronto navigate the 2026 regular season. With Gausman, Bieber and potentially Berríos entering free agency next winter, Cease can also be a reliable anchor for future iterations of Toronto’s rotation.
However, durability alone doesn’t earn over $200 million. Cease appeared more like a mid-rotation innings eater than a market-setting ace in 2025, but the upside is obvious. He ranked second among all pitchers on The Athletic’s top 50 free agents for a reason, earning Cy Young and MVP votes in two of the last four seasons. Cease led all American League starters in WAR (6.4) in 2022, with a 2.20 ERA, rattling off another top season in 2024. Though his ERA ballooned in 2023 and 2025, the righty’s FIP and expected ERA remain essentially constant. He’s posted an xERA between 2.70 and 4.10 in each of the last five years, with his FIP falling between 3.10 and 3.75 in that timeframe.
Dylan Cease’s Statistics (2021-2025)
YearERAFIPxERABABIP
2021
3.91
3.41
3.65
.310
2022
2.20
3.10
2.70
.261
2023
4.58
3.72
4.10
.331
2024
3.47
3.10
3.31
.266
2025
4.55
3.56
3.46
.323
Durability sets Cease’s floor, and the Jays are now tasked with unlocking his ceiling more consistently. It’s a similar bet the Jays made when they signed Robbie Ray ahead of the 2021 season and Yusei Kikuchi the next winter. Ray and Kikuchi, like Cease, possessed high-velocity fastballs and flashed All-Star or higher upside with elite strikeout stuff. Though also like Cease, inconsistency and command issues held them back before.
While Kikuchi’s first season in Toronto was disastrous, the Blue Jays helped him halve his walk rate in 2022 and 2023. Robbie Ray worked with pitching coach Pete Walker to revive his career, becoming an ace and winning the 2021 Cy Young Award. Ray has a lot in common with Cease. The pair arrived in Toronto with two primary pitches, a high-90s fastball and a slider, while constantly rotating through other mediocre options. The path to success for Ray was ditching the secondary offerings and pounding the strike zone. Cease may benefit from a similar approach, or at least finding a more stable third pitch.
The Jays have unlocked the upside of pitchers like Cease before. However, they signed Ray for just $8 million and Kikuchi for $36 million. In baseball speak, there was plenty of room for surplus value in those deals. This contract is a much more expensive wager, and getting the most out of that $210 million investment is paramount.
There are reasons to believe Cease’s upside could manifest, even without repertoire changes or significant adjustments. As mentioned, his expected metrics have always been great, even through seasons of struggle. When Cease’s ERA ends well over 4.00, his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) often sits well above league average. That’s a metric that usually regresses to the mean.
The Jays could aid Cease’s batted-ball luck with some solid fielding. The right-hander joins a Blue Jays team that ranked seventh in defensive outs above average last year (21), coming from a San Diego Padres squad that graded out well below average (-7).
Batted-ball results aren’t entirely luck, though. Mediocre defence can’t be entirely to blame for Cease’s 2025 underperformance, as Nick Pivetta, Randy Vásquez and Michael King all posted ERAs under 3.90 pitching in front of the same Padres defence as Cease. Pairing Cease with Andrés Giménez and Daulton Varsho may help, but it won’t solve every problem.
Nevertheless, there is upside to be found, whether it’s good fortune, improved defence or adjustments that unlock it. Durability gave the Blue Jays enough faith to invest in Cease long term — it’s what made the deals for Bassitt and Gausman so successful. Yet, the ability to consistently find Cease’s ceiling may dictate how wise this investment truly was.