What if Tarik Skubal Isn’t Untouchable? The Cy Young Case for Dylan Cease
Skubal is going for a Cy Young three-peat, but the Blue Jays' new ace could give him a real run for his money.
What if Tarik Skubal doesn’t win three straight Cy Youngs?
We might finally have a window to look at the field. Skubal doesn’t look quite as impenetrable as he did in 2024 and 2025, especially early on.
In both of his Cy Young seasons, the first month was one of Skubal’s best, and it makes sense. His arm is fresh, he’s sitting 98–100 MPH, and when that’s the case, he’s the best pitcher in the world by a pretty comfortable margin.
He’s still been great this year, but his strikeout rate is down six percent, and his hard-hit rate is up six percent. His fastball velocity is down a full tick, and I’m not convinced it fully comes back.
At the end of the day, Skubal is human, and no one in the American League has thrown more innings than him over the past two seasons. That’s just his regular-season workload, not even counting the 40 playoff innings or his brief WBC stint.
Also, only two pitchers in MLB history have ever done it. This isn’t an easy task by any stretch.
What if he’s just really good this year instead of a pitching cyborg? We’ll still call him the best pitcher in the world, even if he doesn’t win the Cy Young.
It’s officially time to scan the field and look elsewhere.
Picking from the Field
I love Cam Schlittler, especially as a Yankee fan. His cutter looks like Corbin Burnes’, and he’s been obliterating hitters. I don’t expect a ton of regression, but I do worry about the innings.
Schlittler has never thrown more than 121 innings in a professional season. With Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón returning soon, the Yankees have seven viable starters (including Luis Gil) to manage workloads heading into October. It’s also fair to question whether Schlittler can hold this velocity all year. He’s been as good as you could possibly imagine, but Dylan Cease still holds the FIP edge (1.47 to 1.55).
José Soriano is a monster, but he’s not stranding every baserunner all season. A 100% LOB% just isn’t sustainable. He probably settles into a high-2.00s, low-3.00s ERA – really solid, likely a top-five or top-10 finisher, but not my Cy Young pick, especially at the current price.
Max Fried looks intent on eating innings this year, and it’s working, but without the strikeout volume, it’s hard to see him posting the kind of numbers needed to win the award. Great pitcher, just not my choice here.
Then you have Bryan Woo, who looks like he may have taken a slight step back, a 37-year-old Jacob deGrom, and a 35-year-old Kevin Gausman. If I had to pick from that group, it’d be Gausman, but even with a strong start, his ceiling feels limited.
Garrett Crochet would have to pitch out of this world for the rest of the season to win it. Cole Ragans has been inconsistent. Framber Valdez, George Kirby, and Logan Gilbert are all excellent but lack true upside.
Which leaves us with one.
Dylan Cease Is Reborn
The Blue Jays right-hander looks as dominant as anyone in baseball right now. That’s the eye test; more importantly, the numbers back it up.
The only pitchers matching Cease’s strikeout rates are elite relievers. Among pitchers who have thrown at least 10 innings, Cease ranks fourth in K/9. Ahead of relievers like Andrés Muñoz and Aaron Ashby. The only starter in the top 10 is Dylan Cease.
Mason Miller is at 18.23 K/9; Cease sits at 15.43. If Cease somehow maintained that, he’d strike out 308 batters in 175 innings. He won’t, but even in a “down” 2025 season, he led MLB with an 11.5 K/9. His peak is 12.28, and he’s never looked better. 13 K/9 is not an outlandish number to project.
This looks like the best version of Dylan Cease we’ve ever seen, even better than 2022, when he posted a 2.20 ERA over 184 innings. He’s throwing his fastball harder than ever. Same with the slider. Both are performing at elite levels, but it goes beyond that.
One of the biggest differences this year is the contact profile. He’s keeping 55% of batted balls on the ground with a revamped pitch mix. He hasn’t been above 40% since his rookie year. Yes, he’ll walk some guys, that’s still the flaw, but it’s really the only one. Blake Snell won two Cy Youngs with below-average command, and Cease’s stuff honestly looks even better.
Cease has always dominated righties, but lefties used to give him some trouble. Now he has a changeup to counter that, a pitch with a 69% whiff rate, 67 MPH average exit velocity, and a -3 average launch angle. He was always an elite supinator but struggled to pronate, which is why his arsenal leaned heavily on breaking stuff. Clearly, he and the Jays unlocked something.
And you can’t forget the knuckle curve, another bat-misser that also generates ground balls (-3 LA). He used to throw over 80% fastballs and sliders. Not anymore. And somehow, both pitches still look as good as ever.
It’s hard to overstate how nasty this pitch mix is. Four legitimately elite pitches, plus an elite defense behind him, and he’s already settling in nicely at Rogers Centre: two starts, 10.1 innings, 2 ER, 20 strikeouts, one extra-base hit allowed. One of the best receivers in the game, Alejandro Kirk, will be back in May.
Opponents have a .365 BABIP against him, and he still has a 2.10 ERA. He’s tied for fourth in the AL in fWAR despite only making five starts, while most others are at six or seven.
There’s no innings cap here either. He’s coming off a relatively light workload, 171 total innings including playoffs.
Cease always had top-end upside, but this version is on another level. If he were in the NL, he’d be my pick to win it there as well.
The Pushback
Cease is not efficient right now, averaging five innings per start. But you can make an argument that strengthens his case. His walk rate should come down from 12%, and that .365 BABIP won’t hold. He’s already been one of the best pitchers in baseball, and there’s still room for improvement.
Even if he only throws 170 innings, there is precedent for a case like that. Corbin Burnes won it in 2021 with 167 innings, striking out 12.61 per nine innings with a 1.63 FIP. Burnes beat out Walker Buehler and Zack Wheeler, who both cleared 200 innings. Buehler even had a 2.48 ERA that year. Justin Verlander won it in 2022 while throwing 175 innings (Cease finished as the runner-up that season). Snell won it in 2023 with 180 innings while walking 4.95 batters per nine innings.
If you’ve been watching Cease for a long time, you know that blow-up starts are certainly in the cards. That can happen when you’re primarily throwing two pitches, and north of 60% of the contact you allow is in the air. This is not the same Dylan Cease as we’ve seen in the past.
Last year, fastballs and sliders took up 82.9% of his pitches. This year, that number is down to 66.3%, and what’s transpired is more strikeouts, less hard contact, and more groundballs. Not to mention, he has a real weapon against lefties that he’s never had before. I believe his “blow-up” starts will be more infrequent than ever.
The Bet
Dylan Cease is tied for fifth in odds for AL Cy Young. I think I make a fair argument for him being number two, but in all honesty, it’s not crazy to place him higher than Skubal. With pitchers, you have to worry about injuries, and anyone can get hurt at any given time, but nobody has made more starts since 2021 than Cease. He’s MLB’s pitching Iron Man. If there was any pitcher to back based on health alone, it would be Cease.
He signed for $175M this offseason, but this version looks like a $250M+ pitcher. At 30 years old, his window is now, and at +1200, I am more than happy to jump in and back a pitcher I’ll be turning on the TV to watch every fifth day.
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Written by
Peter is the Co-Founder and Director of Content Strategy of Justbaseball.com and the Co-Host of the Just Baseball Show.