Dylan Cease opened his first Cactus League start of the 2021 season with two outs over the course of four pitches covering three different pitch types. All were strikes.
Ian Happ opened with a first-pitch groundout, and Willson Contreras followed him to the plate. His attempts to lure Cease into trouble by taking were similarly unsuccessful. After taking a first-pitch fastball for strike one, Contreras couldn't get started on a sharp front-door curveball for strike two.
That put Cease in a situation that has eluded him for much of his MLB career -- the putaway pitch. Either he struggled to muscle a count into his favor, or his tendency to pull everything he throws turned most non-strike breaking balls into waste pitches. His strikeout rate consequently suffered.
Against Contreras, however, he wasted nothing. Look at this slider.
And so Cease set sail for a successful debut. The box score shows three scoreless innings, allowing just one hit and zero walks while striking out two. The box score does not show a pitch count, but here's my unofficial tally:
| Type | Pitches | Strikes | Whiffs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fastball | 18 | 16 | 2 |
| Slider | 7 | 4 | 2 |
| Curveball | 10 | 4 | 2 |
| Changeup | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| Total | 37 | 25 | 6 |
He threw 37 pitches and got six swinging strikes. The specific pitches might be off here and there, due to the lack of public-facing velocity readings, the camera's severe offset, and some pitches that were spun or spiked too severely to be distinguishable without more info. On the plus side, it's also possible that I confused a curve for a slider because both had power and sharpness.
We've seen Cease in command for a spring start at a time, so opening his year 1-for-1 isn't by itself sufficient for excitement. Fortunately, Cease was so flawed during the 2020 season that he doesn't need to fix everything in order to function as an effective starter.
For example, it still looks like he's dealing with fastball cut that doesn't necessarily help him. Eric Sogard accounted for the lone hit off Cease with a flared single to center field. If Cease threw the four-seamer of his dreams, it probably should have sailed above Sogard's bat, at least enough to result in a foul ball for a two-strike count.
But glass half full, Jonathan Lucroy set up away to a left-handed hitter, and Cease stayed away from a left-handed hitter, which allowed him to stay off the barrel.
Similarly, you could see some horizontal movement on this jam sandwich by Ildemaro Vargas ...
... but it was to the desired side of the plate, and again resulted in weak contact.
The fastball paired well with other pitches, too. When Cease located one low and away to Matt Duffy to even the count at 2-2, he snapped off a slider that fooled Duffy into seeing a pitch with similar intentions.
Likewise, here's Happ too far in front of a curve his second time up, then late on a high fastball, turning a 1-0 count into a 1-2 advantage for Cease.
Did Ethan Katz magically solve all of Dylan Cease's problems? Probably not. But Cease's scouting report was so brief last year that any one improvement probably reduces the severity of other flaws. Hitters could basically focus on two pitches and one half of the plate. They took 83 percent of the curves Cease threw last year, because 63 percent of them weren't strikes. Having to consider swinging at a good knuckle curve makes it harder to swing with conviction on fastballs. Having to cover both sides of the plate makes meeting a heater with the barrel a bigger challenge, even if it's cutting when it's supposed to rise.
The frustrating thing about Cease is also the encouraging thing: He hasn't given himself a chance. He's lacked the basic control to get ahead in the count or pitch backward, so we're not sure what it looks like when he forces hitters to make or break the day on a routine basis. If his debut is representative of the future, it should be more than enough for the fourth spot in the rotation.
(Photo by Keith Gillett/Icon Sportswire)
