6:56pm: Drew Thorpe and Jairo Iriarte are among the players headed back to the White Sox, Morosi reports (X links).
6:26pm: Cease has indeed been traded to San Diego, tweets Jon Heyman of the New York Post.
6:15pm: The Padres are finalizing a trade for White Sox’s staff ace Dylan Cease, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN (on X). The return isn’t clear. MLB.com’s Jon Morosi reported this morning that San Diego and Chicago had recently discussed Cease.
It brings an end to one of the offseason’s top storylines. Cease has been a trade candidate at least as far back as last summer’s deadline. While Chicago took him off the market at that time, first-year general manager Chris Getz made clear that he was willing to consider offers on virtually everyone on the roster. That made Cease one of the top names of the winter.
Chicago fielded offers early in the offseason before pulling back. The Sox indicated they wanted to wait for the free agent rotation market to play out before aggressively shopping the star righty. Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery have lingered in free agency longer than anyone anticipated. With Opening Day two weeks away, Chicago seemed to find more urgency to make a move. They’d reportedly talked with the Yankees and Rangers within the past few days, but it’ll be San Diego that gets the deal done.
It’s a massive strike for San Diego just a week before they’ll open the regular season with a two-game set against the Dodgers in South Korea. For much of the offseason, the Padres have gone in the opposite direction. They faced significant payroll constraints that led to the free agent departures of Josh Hader, Seth Lugo, Nick Martinez and Michael Wacha. Snell seems likely to follow.
The biggest loss, of course, came via trade. The Padres dealt Juan Soto to the Yankees before his final year of team control. That both offloaded his arbitration salary — which eventually checked in at $31MM — and brought back a number of controllable starting pitchers to compensate for the free agent departures. Michael King will step into the middle of the rotation. Jhony Brito, Randy Vásquez and highly-regarded prospect Drew Thorpe are all candidates for a back-end role.
Despite targeting upper level pitching in the Soto return, San Diego had a largely unproven rotation. Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish were locked into the top two spots. King was ensured of a rotation job after a strong finish last season with the Yankees, but he’d been a reliever for most of his major league career. He only moved to the starting staff for his final eight starts beginning at the end of August. The rest of the starting pitching options in the organization have limited MLB experience of any kind.
Cease addresses that lack of experience. The former sixth-round pick has been a fixture of the Sox’s rotation since 2020. Aside from a brief virus-related absence in ’21, he hasn’t missed any time as a major leaguer. Cease leads the majors with 109 starts over the last four seasons. He’s 16th in innings pitched.
At his best, Cease has paired that pristine durability with a top-of-the-rotation ceiling. He was dominant two seasons ago, turning in a 2.20 ERA with an excellent 30.4% strikeout rate through 184 innings. He was runner-up behind Justin Verlander in that season’s Cy Young balloting and received some down-ballot MVP consideration.
The 28-year-old didn’t replicate that ace-caliber production last season. He had a pedestrian 4.58 ERA across 177 frames. While some level of regression from a 2.20 mark always seemed likely, his earned run average more than doubling wasn’t expected.
More to come.
