With their rotation already struggling to field even four starting pitchers and a doubleheader coming up on Wednesday, the White Sox would've had to work to settle on somebody who wasn't Dylan Cease.
That didn't stop them earlier in the season, but the Sox aren't going to fight it anymore. Dylan Cease will make his major league debut on Wednesday.
Cease isn't going to be the 26th man, either. He's going to be part of the White Sox rotation going forward, and the White Sox stayed true to form in introducing a pitching prospect against an easier slate, at least on paper. The Detroit Tigers are dead-last in the American League in OPS, and if Cease then makes a start in the second series after the All-Star break against the Royals, they rank 12th out of 15.
Cease represents a departure from the previous handling of pitching prospects in that the White Sox did not wait for an extended run of quality or dominance before calling him up. While Michael Kopech, Reynaldo Lopez and Lucas Giolito looked ready for about a month before the Sox gave them the green light, Cease has struggled over his last four full starts (the last one was limited to an inning by rain, which has been another constant of his season in Charlotte). He has an 8.82 ERA and 11 walks to 13 strikeouts over 16⅓ innings, and while he's been victimized by shoddy defense at times, he's also had problems settling into a start.
However, the environment at Charlotte is also a departure from past norms. While Kopech, Lopez and Giolito all pitched within BB&T Ballpark's cozy dimensions, they didn't have to contend with a rabbit ball that turned Charlotte into an offensive Bacchanalia rivaled only by parks at altitude out west.
There may be only so much Cease can learn from that level under those conditions, especially if rain is going to be a constant threat. Plus, as we discussed with Eloy Jiménez last year, giving a prospect a half-season to understand what he's dealing with might put the Sox in better position to capitalize on a soft market or an equally weak AL Central. It's better than having four-fifths of the rotation chalked up as a total mystery.
The expectations shouldn't be too high for Cease at the onset, and everybody and anybody he's replacing have effectively lowered the bar for him. If Cease's starts are a mess, at least he'll fit right in.
