Dylan Cease Can Reach His Cy Young Ceiling for the Blue Jays
Armed with an expanded and upgraded pitch mix, Cease set Toronto's franchise record for strikeouts in a debut performance.
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Dylan Cease has been a controversial pitcher ever since he debuted with the Chicago White Sox back in 2019. Armed with hellacious stuff, Cease has long been one of, if not the best, strikeout starters in the sport.
The issue he’s run into seemingly every other year of his career is inefficiency.
Cease has often come up short from a quality starts standpoint due to the fact that his pitch count tends to rise quickly throughout his outings. Whether that’s from his control issues or his defense not making plays behind him, an inability to go deep into his outings has plagued him.
In spite of that, Cease has still had top-five Cy Young finishes in two of his last four seasons, having finished second in 2022 and fourth in 2024. The Toronto Blue Jays are hoping the even-year Cease theatrics continue here in 2026.
To that end, they’ve made some deliberate changes to put his delivery and pitch mix, hoping an expanded repertoire paired with better defense behind him will help Cease consistently look like the 2022 and 2024 versions of himself.
Let’s zoom in on the two specific and deliberate changes Cease has made and the results of those adjustments during his first start as a Blue Jay.
Cease’s Pitch Mix
Graphics courtesy of TJStats.
When we look at Cease’s full pitching log from 2025 and compare it to his first start in 2026, a couple of things stand out.
His four-seam fastball was up 1.6 mph while adding 1.3″ of IVB, meaning not only was he buzzing it in the zone faster, but it also had better shape to it (more ride/less drop), giving hitters an extremely uncomfortable look.
When you put into context that the hardest average four-seam fastball in baseball last year was 98.2 mph, belonging to Paul Skenes, it’s jarring to see an already elite fastball from Cease make the jump to averaging 98.7 mph. Even if it was for just one start.
The slider and knuckle-curve remain largely the same from a shape standpoint, with Cease throwing the latter slightly harder thus far this season (+1.7 mph). Both pitches have previously graded out extremely well, especially Cease’s gyro-slider, which he’ll tell you is his best pitch. So, not surprising to see not much has changed in that regard.
Then we have the introduction of a completely revamped changeup. Now, to understand why this is such a massive development, you have to understand how Cease works as a pitcher.
He is a natural supinator, and what that means is, as a pitcher, he’s someone who naturally rotates his forearm so the palm faces upward/inward at release, creating glove-side movement. This “supination bias” leads to high-spin, sweeping pitches like curveballs and sliders, but also leads to struggles with developing good sinkers, changeups, and splitters.
In this video with Rob Friedman (Pitching Ninja), dating back a few years, Cease discusses his then extremely slow changeup and wanting to learn the grip of Kevin Gausman’s splitter. It was an idea he later scrapped, as he was never able to properly get a hold of the grip and pronate as he delivered the pitch.
Cease has toyed with a changeup in the past but scrapped it almost immediately because he couldn’t close the gap in velocity between it and his fastball. This is from a start back in 2024 against the Giants, in which Cease breaks off three “lollipop” changeups in his outing.
To say he looks uncomfortable would be putting it lightly. The arm speed is slowed down, two of the three pitches are non-competitive, and ultimately it’s just not a pitch that hitters need to have a care in the world for.
In his Blue Jays debut, however, Cease debuted a whole new changeup. One that spiked nearly 7 mph in velocity and dropped a couple ticks in IVB. Thanks to the great Lance Brozdowski, we have a great shot of his new grip, too.
Cease’s new changeup averaged 83.7 mph, getting up to as high as 85.8 with 15.3″ of IVB, giving it an unorthodox shape. As the man himself put it ever so eloquently, “It’s not metrically the sexiest pitch.”
For six long years, Cease has battled to find a changeup he could throw with some level of confidence and consistency, and now he looks to finally have one. It’s the first time the pitch has averaged over 80 mph in his career.
You can still see how he struggles to supinate as he delivers the pitch, but the fact that he’s been able to increase the velocity is what’s most important. This is the sixth pitch in his arsenal; it doesn’t need to grade out as a strong offering, as long as it keeps hitters honest and at least cognizant of it, then it’s doing its job.
Changes to His Delivery
In an interview with the Gate 14 podcast during spring training, Cease was asked by Avery Chenier if he had learned anything new about himself as a pitcher since he joined a new team with new voices, and the answer he gave was quite funny. Except, he was 100% serious.
Cease went on to mention how, when he’s staring at the target while delivering a pitch, his stuff tends to get “all parachute-y and all over the place,” but when he averts his gaze while delivering, he can generate great shapes on all of his pitches, even getting as high as 22-23″ of vert on his fastball during side sessions.
You may be asking yourself, did Dylan Cease actually incorporate this during his Blue Jays debut? There’s no way, right? He absolutely did, and the results speak for themselves.
Here he is delivering a fastball in for a strike during a start against the Mets back in July of last year, with him fully locked on the catcher’s glove the entire time.
And here he is in his Blue Jays debut this past Saturday, delivering a 98.6 mph fastball for a strike to Denzel Clarke while momentarily averting his head and gaze from the target before nodding with apparent approval after delivering the pitch.
After one start, the results reflect a more extensive and upgraded arsenal of pitches. Cease is throwing harder and with better shapes. The caveat being that this is a one-start sample that we’re comparing to a full-season workload from the previous year.
At the end of the day, one thing is clear. Dylan Cease is a meticulous thinker and observer. He’s constantly looking for a new cutting-edge way to make himself better. Clearly, nothing is too weird or obscure for his tastes, and that’s what makes him so good. A pitcher with his level of stuff, paired with an innate desire to continue learning and adjusting, is a Cy Young-caliber arm.
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Damon's ultimate passion lies in Baseball. An aspiring sports journalist, Damon has been a die hard Blue Jays fan since essentially birth but prides himself from…