The top free-agent pitcher is now off the market. Right-handed starter Dylan Cease -- MLB.com's No. 7-ranked free agent and the top hurler in the 2025-26 class -- has agreed to a seven-year, $210 million deal with the Blue Jays, a source told MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand on Wednesday. The club has not confirmed the news.
Here is a breakdown of this move from all angles, via MLB.com experts:
Why did the Blue Jays make this move?
Via Blue Jays beat writer Keegan Matheson
Cease, who turns 30 in late December, gives the Blue Jays a top-of-the-rotation starter to build around while they chase the World Series they fell so painfully short of just four weeks ago. One of the game’s more durable starters, Cease has pitched more than 160 innings in each of the past five seasons, showing the same durability the Blue Jays have coveted greatly in past pitching splashes like Kevin Gausman, José Berríos and Chris Bassitt. Doing this with Cease’s upside and strikeout rates, though, is what makes this deal so appealing.
Cease has struck out 200-plus batters in each of those five seasons, good for a rate of 11.3 per nine innings. That’s right in line with Gausman’s peak season in 2023, but Cease has maintained that level along with his excellent velocity, averaging 97.1 mph on his fastball last season. Pair that with a slider that gives hitters fits and deep arsenal beyond it, Cease is a dream project for Pete Walker and the Blue Jays’ coaching staff, who have shown an ability to take veteran starters and turn them up a notch. More >>
Hot Stove implications
Via senior national reporter Mark Feinsand
It’s rare to see the top free agents -- especially those represented by Scott Boras -- sign huge nine-figure deals in November. The top four starters left are Ranger Suárez, Michael King, Framber Valdez and Tatsuya Imai. Suárez and Imai are both represented by Boras, who clearly already has a feel for what the starting pitching market looks like after negotiating the Cease deal. The guess here is that Suárez is the next starter to sign, as Imai may choose to wait until he gets closer to the end of his posting window, which will arrive on Jan. 2.
For the past couple of weeks, we have heard about the Blue Jays’ interest in Kyle Tucker, with some suggesting that Toronto could sign both Tucker and Bichette. Now that the Jays have handed out a $210 million deal to Cease, it seems unlikely that there’s room for both Bichette and Tucker. Bichette is probably still the No. 1 priority for Toronto, and given that many in the industry expect Tucker to sign for considerably more than Bichette, it’s possible that Cease’s deal is a sign that Bichette is their preference among the hitters. More >>
Diving deep
Via analyst Mike Petriello
That Cease got seven years is somewhat surprising; that he got paid a whole lot of money to join a new team was not. It may seem that way, thanks to the 4.55 ERA that looks a lot like 2023’s 4.58 ERA, neither of which are, admittedly, impressive. But teams have made it endlessly clear for years now that ERA is not what they look at when valuing pitchers – we saw it earlier this week when the Red Sox gave up a highly regarded prospect for Sonny Gray’s 4.28 ERA, and we’re going to see it again when someone looks beyond Devin Williams’s 4.79 mark.
In Cease’s case, what Toronto sees is clear: strikeouts (lots of them) and innings (lots of those, too). He has five consecutive 200-strikeout seasons; no one else in that time has more than three. No one in the last five years has made more starts; only six pitchers have thrown more innings, and two of them, Gausman and Berríos, are now his teammates in the Toronto rotation. When we looked at the best available free-agent pitchers recently, Cease’s name kept popping up in ways that make him look like a late-inning reliever who can throw a ton of innings, in no small part because he’s more or less a two-pitch guy who can hit 97.
But what about the high ERA? It might not predict the future very well, yet the runs don’t count any less. In Cease’s case, it was a little about lousy defense behind him – only seven pitchers received less fielding support than he did – and one truly wretched early start in West Sacramento, where he allowed nearly 10% of his entire season’s earned runs, in part again to some unfathomably poor defense. It’s not hard to see what this looks like when it works, because we have seen it; in 2022, he had a 2.20 ERA for the White Sox, and the only real difference for him then was a slightly better ability to avoid the long ball.
It means that the Jays aren’t worried about the 4.55 ERA; they’re looking at the 3.46 expected ERA or the 3.56 FIP or the fact that he’s projected, in 2026, to be a top-12 pitcher. Seven years is a surprisingly lengthy term, and maybe that’s how it will eventually feel. Then again, for all the good feelings generated by Toronto’s run to the World Series, the rotation was just OK (slightly below average in metrics both old and new) and now has lost Bassitt and Max Scherzer to free agency, with Gausman entering the final year of his deal and Shane Bieber back for perhaps just one year. The Blue Jays needed help now, and they needed it for the future, too. They got it. Just don’t worry about the ERA that much. They won’t be.
Stat to know
Via MLB.com research staff
1,106: Cease’s strikeout total since the start of 2021, the highest in the Major Leagues. Only Cease, Zack Wheeler (1,041) and Gausman (1,020) have more than 1,000 strikeouts over the past five seasons, a testament to their consistency and bat-missing stuff. Cease certainly has both of those attributes, making at least 32 starts in all five seasons and striking out between 214 and 227 batters in each of those years. In a high-velocity era where pitchers’ arm injuries have become commonplace, Cease’s durability -- coupled with his swing-and-miss stuff -- is highly valuable. Of course, Cease’s past stability is no guarantee of his future health, but his consistency is a large part of his $210 million price tag. And the K’s sure don’t hurt, either.
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