Right-hander Dylan Cease has agreed to a seven-year, $210 million contract with the Blue Jays on Wednesday, a source told MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand. The club has not yet confirmed the deal.
Cease is one of baseball’s premier strikeout artists. He’s eclipsed the 200-strikeout mark in each of the past five seasons, the only pitcher in the Majors to do so. No other pitcher has more than three 200-K seasons in the past five years.
Cease has averaged 221 strikeouts per season since 2021, and his 1,106 total strikeouts over the last five seasons lead MLB. Zack Wheeler (1,041) and Kevin Gausman (1,020) are the only other pitchers with 1,000 K’s in that timespan.
That elite strikeout track record, along with Cease’s relatively young age — he’ll be entering his age-30 season in 2026 — made him one of the top starting pitchers on the market this offseason. Cease has excellent swing-and-miss stuff, armed with an upper-90s rising fastball, a high-80s slider that has generated over 100 strikeouts by itself in each of the last four seasons and a low-80s curveball with sharp 12-6 movement.
He’s also been one of MLB’s more durable starters, making over 30 starts and pitching more than 160 innings for five years in a row. No one has made more starts than Cease in the last five seasons, and only a handful of pitchers — Logan Webb, Gausman, José Berríos, Wheeler, Framber Valdez and Luis Castillo — have thrown more innings.
Cease has twice finished in the top five of Cy Young Award voting. He was the American League runner-up with the White Sox in 2022 and placed fourth in the National League with the Padres in 2024. He received MVP votes both years.
That said, Cease’s results have been inconsistent at times. In 2022, he had a 2.20 ERA to go along with his 227 strikeouts. The next season, he had 214 K’s but a 4.58 ERA.
In 2024, his first season with the Padres, he had a 3.47 ERA to go along with his 224 K’s. But in 2025, while he had 215 strikeouts, he also had a 4.55 ERA.
All told, though, over seven big league seasons with the White Sox and Padres, Cease has been a very good pitcher. He’s 65-58 in his career with a 3.88 ERA and 1,231 strikeouts in 1,015 1/3 innings (10.9 K/9).
Cease helped lead the Padres to the postseason in both of his seasons in San Diego, and also made the playoffs twice with the White Sox in 2020 and 2021. He has an 8.74 ERA in five career playoff outings, although he pitched 3 2/3 scoreless innings with five strikeouts in his most recent playoff start for the Padres in the 2025 NL Wild Card Series against the Cubs.
