Dylan Cease keeps Cy Young pressure on Cam Schlittler in Blue Jays win against Mariners

For a team that badly needed to change the conversation after an ugly series loss to the Kansas City Royals, the Toronto Blue Jays picked a pretty good time to look like themselves again.

In a rematch of last year’s American League Championship Series, the Seattle Mariners arrived in Toronto with both teams sitting in the wrong part of the Wild Card picture. The Blue Jays entered the night at 65-70, sitting 3.5 games back of a postseason spot, while Seattle came in at 64-70 and four games out. It was not exactly the heavyweight sequel either side had envisioned after being the final two American League teams standing in 2025, but it was still a game in which neither team really felt like they could afford to let slip away.

For one night, at least, the Blue Jays responded the way a team with September ambitions is supposed to respond.

Toronto jumped out to a 3-1 lead in the first inning, then did something that has been a rare sight this season, easily this season, they kept adding on. Nathan Lukes and George Springer launched solo shots in the fifth, giving

Springer’s blast to left field inevitably brought back memories of his Game 7 home run against the Mariners in last year’s ALCS, the swing that sent the Blue Jays to the World Series.

Kazuma Okamoto added another blast an inning later, launching his 27th home run of the season. He's closing in on a 30 home run campaign in his first year in MLB.

If the Blue Jays are going to make any kind of late push, this is the formula that has to show up more often. Power and add-on runs have to be part of it. Of course, another big reason to celebrate this win had to do with Dylan Cease.

At this point, Cease has been the most consistent player on the entire team. He once again gave the Blue Jays quality, effective innings, six of them on Friday night, while allowing one earned run and getting eight strikeouts. It was another dominant outing that keeps him right in the middle of the American League Cy Young Award race.

Cease has now struck out at least seven batters in 19 consecutive starts, the third-longest streak of its kind in a single season in MLB history. The last pitcher to do it in one season was Randy Johnson in 2001.

But Cease is not running away with the award. Cam Schlittler made sure of that on the same night, throwing 5.2 scoreless innings with eight strikeouts in the Yankees’ 1-0 win over the Boston Red Sox. Schlittler did walk five, but he limited the damage, reached 200 strikeouts on the season and continued building one of the more fascinating breakout campaigns in the league.

Cy Young race between Dylan Cease and Cam Schlittler could come down to the wire

That is where this race gets interesting. Schlittler has that Yankees legend narrative surrounding him. He's a 25-year-old starter emerging as one of the Yankees’ most important arms. Cease has the consistency, durability and a historic strikeout streak. By the end of September, the debate may come down to what voters value most: the peak, the cleanest run prevention numbers, the most reliable workload or the most repeatable dominance.

Blue Jays' manager John Schneider, unsurprisingly, would build Cease’s campaign around his pitcher's reliability. He pointed to WHIP and quality starts as two of the numbers he tends to value, but the larger argument is about how much Cease changes the way Toronto can manage games around him.

“Just because of the way bullpens are used,” Schneider told reporters. “When he’s out there, we’re pretty comfortable with him getting deep into the game. That impacts what you do in the days before and the days after.”

The Cy Young race will keep building every time Schlittler and Cease take the mound for their respective teams. Both are trying to pitch their clubs into the postseason first and foremost, but the award race will continue to linger in the background.

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