Dylan Cease's Cy Young runner-up is best answer yet to critics of his Blue Jays' contract

In the winter of 2025, Dylan Cease decided he wanted to spend the next seven seasons with the Toronto Blue Jays. After signing a seven-year, $210 million deal, all he heard was that the Blue Jays had made a mistake. He then spent the summer proving otherwise.

On Wednesday, the Cy Young voting made it official: Cease finished second in the American League, behind only Yankees ace Cam Schlittler, truly making year one worth every penny in one of the largest free-agent contracts awarded in franchise history.

Back in February, an anonymous survey by The Athletic's Jayson Stark asked baseball executives to name the worst signing of the offseason, and 13 of them picked Cease, well ahead of the next player, Kyle Tucker. The worry was control and risk.

Stark noted the $210 million was a record for a pitcher who has led his league in walks and wild pitches twice. "If he walks less guys than the dollars that he's paid," one voter quipped, "he's got a chance." Cease was coming off a season in which he posted a 4.55 ERA with San Diego in 2025 and walked almost 10 percent of the batters he faced.

It is the second runner-up finish of his career. After the 2022 season with the White Sox he also finished second. There was also a fourth place finish in 2024 with the Padres.

Then he went out and pitched like an ace. Cease finished 11-6 with a 2.40 ERA, 239 strikeouts in 169 innings over 29 starts, a 1.10 WHIP and a .180 opponents' batting average. He led the AL in strikeouts per nine innings (12.7), hits per nine (5.8) and home runs per nine (0.6), tied Schlittler for the league lead in FIP (2.56), made his first All-Star team, and posted 5.5 WAR, the second-best mark of his career.

His 239 strikeouts are the fourth-most in Blue Jays history, behind only Roger Clemens (twice) and Robbie Ray, both of whom won Cy Youngs. Manager John Schneider also gave him the ball to start the All-Star Game for the American League.

At his peak through June, July and August, a case could be made that he was the most dominant pitcher in the league. He carried a no-hitter into the ninth inning against the Giants in July, and later that month he struck out 12 Red Sox in a one-hit complete-game shutout. For much of the summer, the AL Cy Young race looked like a two-man contest between a pair of AL East aces.

Dylan Cease's second place finish backs his spectacular first season with Blue Jays

Cease received 22 of 30 second-place votes and 110 points, ahead of Guardians rookie Parker Messick (84), while Schlittler took all 30 first-place votes.

The vote looks like it came down to how each guy finished and some traditional counting stats. Schlittler and Cease both struck out 239 batters, but Schlittler's ERA was 1.95 to Cease's 2.40. Schlittler also had the edge in innings pitched as he threw 193.2 innings to Cease's 169, and his WAR was 7.0 to Cease's 5.5.

Cease's season began to slip after that Red Sox start on July 25, when he first felt the shoulder discomfort. His fastball dropped into the mid-90s. He went on the 15-day injured list on Sept. 23, with right shoulder inflammation.

That doesn't take away from what Cease did, but it does explain why the final vote wasn't close. Schlittler's 215 ERA+ is a Yankees franchise record, and New York was 21-12 in his starts.

So how does the $210 million look now? The question in February was whether Cease could handle the pressure and the workload in Toronto, and his first season he answered that.

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