The Toronto Blue Jays are hoping they can get Dylan Cease back to his top form after his two-year stint with the San Diego Padres.
The Blue Jays madea splash on Cease in the offseason, signing him to a seven-year contract worth $210 million, and according to MLB insider Tom Verducci, Toronto has an interesting plan on the right-handed pitcher — similar to what Toronto did with one of its former pitchers, Robbie Ray.
“Yeah, they're really excited because let's face it, he's the guy whose results haven't matched the ability and the talent, the stuff that he has,” Verducci said on the MLB Network.
“Throws a ton of breaking pitches. For me, he doesn't throw nearly enough strikes. So their plan, I call it the Robbie Ray plan. Remember when they traded for Robbie Ray from Arizona? And they got him back into the strike zone and they had him throw more fastballs. That's going to be the same plan with Dylan Cease.”
The comparison to what the Blue Jays did with Ray should excite Toronto fans, just based on the results. In his first full season with the Blue Jays, Ray went 13-7 and led the American League in ERA (2.84), strikeouts (248) and WHIP (1.045) across 32 starts and 193.1 innings.
It remains to be seen whether using the same blueprint that increases the fastball usage will have as dramatic an effect on the 30-year-old Cease, but the Blue Jays must feel encouraged by the success they had with Ray.
Cease went 8-012 with a 4.55 ERA in 32 starts for the Padres in 2025. That season, he also posted a 29.8 percent strikeout rate, which was slightly above his 28.6 K% in his career in the big leagues.
