How Will Dylan Cease’s Contract With The Blue Jays Affect The Pitching Market?

What Does Cease’s Contract Mean For The Remaining Pitcher Free Agents?

Cease was the first domino to fall in a starting pitching class that features Framber Valdez, Tatsuya Imai, Michael King, Ranger Suarez, and Zac Gallen. It wouldn’t be a hot take personally to say that he has the highest ceiling of all of the remaining starting pitchers on the market; Cease really is that good. This also theoretically takes Toronto out of the running for another starting pitcher, which means more for the rest of the other pitcher-needy teams. It also helps that his agent is Scott Boras and he usually fetches the big bucks back for his client, hate or love him.

Someone like Valdez and his representatives can point out the fact that he has two top 10 AL CY Young placements in the last three seasons. Valdez is 32 years old, though compared to Cease, who is 29, his game doesn’t rely much on power pitching as he’s inducing ground balls, though. Valdez also had the whole presumed purposeful cross-up incident with his catcher, Cesar Salazar, so some teams might try to use that against him and make him break all of that down. Valdez is also coming off a 3.66 ERA season, where in his 192 innings, he saw his strikeout rate and hard-hit metrics increase, and his ground ball percentage decrease.

Imai might be the most intriguing guy here as he’s coming from the NPB, is 27 years old, and his contract is expected anywhere from the low to high 20s and maybe maxes out at over six or seven seasons. Imai pitched to the tune of a 1.92 ERA in 163.2 innings and 24 starts, while only allowing six home runs and striking out 9.8 batters per nine innings. Age could definitely be a factor here, but he does come with concern as he’s never pitched in the majors, so I would be surprised if he got more than Cease.

King is another one of these high ceiling guys, a former teammate of Cease over the last two seasons on the San Diego Padres. He has some injury concerns, including his time as a reliever with the New York Yankees, and he also missed three months last season with multiple injuries. King hasn’t peaked anywhere close to Cease, respectively, and there’s a solid chance that his contract comes with an opt-out squished in somewhere between a three to five-year contract. King also only has 64 starts under his belt, and in his 3.44 ERA season, he only pitched 73.1 innings.

Suarez is a postseason hero with the Philadelphia Phillies, a very sound pitcher who’s coming off a season behind Zack Wheeler and Cristopher Sanchez. Suarez owns a 1.48 ERA and 44 strikeouts in 42 postseason innings with the Phillies, the epitome of a playoff riser.

We also have to look at the fact that he’s 30 years old, and his fastball velocity has decreased in each of the last three seasons, including this season, where he was at 90.5. A good thing going for Suarez is the fact that he’s been able to limit damage contact over that same stretch as well, even with the velocity dip. Suarez profiles as a really good number two starter, so I don’t quite think he’ll get Cease money since he isn’t seen as a potential ace-level pitcher.

Gallen is coming off such a disappointing season, but he did bounce back in the second half to the point where he declined his $22.05 million qualifying offer from the Arizona Diamondbacks. This is the guy I had the most trouble with because this was such a down season from him, and it doesn’t even look that good for him under the hood either. Galen is 30 years old, had an expected ERA of 4.28, compared to his actual ERA of 4.83. He allowed a barrel % of 9.7, and a hard-hit % of 43% with a decreasing ground ball % and velocity decrease as well.

The second half was a lot nicer to Gallen as he pitched to a 3.97 ERA, and batters only had a combined .649 On Base Plus Slugging Percentage off him. With that in mind, I would assume he gets something similar to King in the three-to-five-year range, with an early opt-out just in case he has a great season.

The End Of My Cease Rant

All in all, I think this was a pretty worthwhile gamble for the Blue Jays to sign Dylan Cease, even if seven years does sound egregious. With deferrals, it comes out to about $182 million over 7 years, with the rest being deferred for a guy with legit ace-level stuff. This Scott Boras buff and legit great seasons in the past, paired with his stuff, probably helps him maintain the largest pitching contract given out this offseason title. Which doesn’t sound too insane when you realize that he now owns the fifth-largest starting pitcher contract in major league history. That list includes Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Gerrit Cole, Max Fried, and Corbin Burnes.

This definitely helped set the pitching market for sure, and guys that have stacked up multiple borderline great seasons have to be smiling from ear to ear with their agents currently.