Each season brings a few tests of faith, and Dylan Cease ended up being one of the biggest ones for the Blue Jays. Toronto signed him on December 2nd last year to a seven-year, $210 million deal, and plenty of outside voices were ready to stamp it as the worst free-agent signing of the offseason. That looks wildly off now.
The Jays were divided, but not nearly as pessimistic. 42.9% of us were ‘Kind of Happy’, 41.8% were Very Happy. Only 5.1% were Kind of or Very Unhappy.
Cease had spent the previous two seasons with the Padres. In 2024, he posted a 3.47 ERA and 4.0 bWAR.
In 2025, he slipped to a 4.55 ERA and 1.0 bWAR. Toronto clearly believed there was something to repair, and while that kind of team confidence usually invites skepticism, the bet paid off.
By the numbers that matter most, this was a big season. Baseball Reference had him at 5.7 WAR, Fangraphs at 5.5, and that translated to $43.9 million in value for the Blue Jays. His 2.56 FIP and 2.93 xFIP backed up the surface results.
The batted-ball profile was strong too. Cease allowed a .274 BABIP, down from .320 last year, and stranded 77.8% of the runners he let on, up from 69.0%.
His line drive rate dropped to 20.4% from 21.8%. Ground balls climbed to 42.1% from 36.6, while fly balls fell to 37.5% from 41.5.
Of those fly balls, 8.1% left the park, down from 11.9.
He also missed more bats. His strikeout rate jumped to 34.9% from 29.8, while his walk rate rose to 11.4% from 9.8. Contact quality moved the right way, with soft contact up to 21.6% from 17.2 and hard contact down to 29.0% from 33.8.
Cease was slightly better against left-handed hitters than right-handed ones, holding lefties to .167/.267/.271 and righties to .198/.289/.270. That’s notable because his career numbers have usually favored right-handers.
He was also better away from home. Opponents hit .162/.257/.234 on the road, and he put up a 1.94 ERA there. At home, hitters managed .198/.295/.305, and his ERA was 2.85.
The split by half was similar. He was a little sharper after the break, with a 2.17 ERA and a .167/.265/.285 line in the second half, compared to 2.56 and .190/.284/.261 before it.
Month by month, the season had some peaks. April: 6 starts, 1-1, 2.87, with batters hitting .220/.326/.246, 0 home runs, 17 walks and 49 strikeouts.
May: 5 starts, 2-2, 3.23, and hitters at .209/.275/.373 with 5 home runs, 9 walks and 43 strikeouts. June brought 4 starts, 1-1, 2.95, and a .182/.308/.221 line with 0 home runs, 14 walks and 36 strikeouts.
July was his best stretch: 5 starts, 3-1, 1.00, with batters at .125/.198/.217, 2 home runs, 11 walks and 46 strikeouts. August followed with 5 starts, 2-0, 2.03, and a .144/.242/.260 line.
September closed at 4 starts, 2-1, 2.89, with hitters at .214/.333/.314.
The Blue Jays were 18-11 in his starts, and they averaged 4.56 runs per game behind him. Even so, they scored three or fewer runs in 11 of those outings.
The rest patterns told their own story. With four days’ rest, Cease made 13 starts and went 5-3 with a 2.75 ERA, while opponents hit .178/.280/.280.
On five days’ rest, he was even better: 10 starts, 5-1, 1.96 ERA, and a .167/.263/.234 line against. With six or more days, he had 6 starts, went 1-2, and posted a 2.38 ERA as hitters managed .206/.291/.310.
The catcher matchups were interesting as well. Tyler Heineman caught him in 5 games, and Cease had a 4.23 ERA with opponents hitting .230/.350/.310.
Alejandro Kirk was behind the plate for 15 games, and that came with a 2.44 ERA and a .173/.276/.256 line. Brandon Valenzuela got 9 games, and Cease was at his best there: 1.43 ERA, with hitters at .167/.236/.273.
By inning, he was sharp early and still solid the second time through. In the first time through the order, batters hit .160/.257/.255.
The second time through, they hit .174/.251/.230. The third time through, things got tougher: .224/.346/.366.
The fourth time through was a tiny sample, just 5 PA, with batters hitting ..250/.400/.250.
He was also good with runners in scoring position, holding hitters to .200/.255/.255. In high-leverage spots, opponents hit .233/.284/.291. In low leverage, they were at .157/.259/.252.
His best outing by GameScore came on July 25th in Boston, when he threw 9 innings, allowed 1 hit, walked 3 and struck out 12 for a 94. He also posted an 88 on July 8th in San Francisco, allowing 1 hit in 8 innings with 3 walks and 11 strikeouts. The rough one came September 18th against the Rangers, when he got a 38 GameScore in 2.2 innings, allowing 3 hits, 4 runs, 1 earned run, 6 walks and 6 strikeouts.
José averaged 5.8 innings per start.
There was a late-season fade, but not enough to overshadow the year. Cease threw 169 innings, down from 189 in 2024, and while the finish looked a little tired, the workload itself wasn’t extreme. Different innings bring different stresses, though, and that matters.
For a first year in a seven-year deal, this was about as clean a start as Toronto could have hoped for. He should be the opening-day starter next year, and when 77% of your outs are strikeouts or groundouts, that usually means the season went the right way.
Before the year, Steamer projected 32 starts, 185 innings, a 3.61 ERA, a 12-10 record and 3.8 fWAR. The innings total was too ambitious, but the rest undershot what Cease delivered.
His stuff held up too. Baseball Savant had his fastball at 96.8 mph this year, down slightly from 97.1 last year, but hitters did less damage against it, going from .241 last year to .204 this year. His slider was a little harder at 89.1, up from 88.7, and batters hit it .145 this year after hitting .228 last year.
The pitch mix shifted, too. Four-seamer usage dropped from 42.1% to 37.0%.
Slider usage fell from 40.8% to 30.1%. The change-up went from 1.2% to 11.5%.
The knuckle curve rose from 8.3% to 10.1%. The sinker increased from 3.9% to 7.9%.
The sweeper stayed at 3.5%.
The preseason polling was mixed but generally optimistic. On the question of whether to take the over or under on 180 innings, 33.81% of us were right.
If Cease hadn’t faded at the end, it would have been close. On the over/under of 77 wins in his seven-year contract, 52.9% of us picked the over.
And when asked who would be the opening-day starter, 9.3 said Cease. Most of us were right in picking Gausman.
In Other News...
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On the move side, Joe Mantiply elected free agency after clearing waivers following his season in Toronto, giving him the chance to look elsewhere for his next landing spot. And there was also a notable farewell for a former Blue Jays reliever, as Liam Hendriks announced his retirement after a 14-year major league career, closing the book on one of the more recognizable arms to pass through the organization in recent years. [Read more 🡒]
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The bigger question is not fit so much as future. Gausman has already indicated that retirement is on the table, which turns any offseason speculation into something more complicated than a standard free-agent chase. If he keeps pitching, Toronto would make sense as a landing spot in 2027, but the first decision belongs to Gausman himself, and that uncertainty is what keeps this story from being simple. [Read more 🡒]
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For a team that keeps circling back to pitching depth, Taillon now fits into an awkward but familiar category: a starter whose recent results were difficult, yet whose track record and availability could still make sense on a short-term, low-risk deal. Toronto has to keep building contingencies, and this is one of those cases where the appeal is less about the past season than the possibility of finding enough stability to matter over the long haul. [Read more 🡒]