Rotation Target: Dylan Cease

This is the second in a series of posts about potential starting pitcher targets for the Orioles. See: Ranger Suárez

• Status: Free agent
• Age: 30
• '25 fWAR: 3.4
• 3-year fWAR: 11.7
• '25 Pitch modeling: 108 Stuff+, 100 Location+, 107 Pitching+
• Career: 3.88 ERA / 3.67 FIP / 3.84 xFIP, 21.0 fWAR

Overview

Depending on your perspective, Dylan Cease is either the most reliable or most volatile starter on the free agent market.

The volatility argument is simple: Despite great stuff and the distant memory of a Cy Young-caliber 2.20 ERA in 2022, Cease has posted ERAs north of 4.50 in two of the past three seasons. It would be insane to pay ace money for that kind of inconsistency, even if you like the upside.

The reliability argument rests on two facts: 1) Cease has made 32 or more starts and thrown 165 or more innings five years in a row, and 2) His FIP has been between 3.10 and 3.72 and his fWAR between 3.4 and 4.7 every year in that span. That combination of durability and peripheral excellence gives him a floor/ceiling combo that should vault him to the top of the free agent market, particularly considering he doesn't turn 30 for a couple of months.

Indeed, if his '23 and '25 ERA (4.58 and 4.55, respectively) had matched his FIP (3.72 and 3.56), he'd be a lock to surpass $200 million. Other ERA predictors, like xERA, xFIP and SIERA, all largely see Cease as a mid-3 ERA guy. He has some of the best stuff in the free agent starter class (108 Stuff+) with good enough command (100 Location+). He will issue walks (career 10.0 BB%), but he gets lots of strikeouts (28.6%) and whiffs (95th percentile). He is a fly ball pitcher, but has managed to keep his home run rate under 1 per 9 innings in four of the last five years.

Aside from a few blemishes, he does nearly everything you'd expect from an ace, and the underlying data suggests he is at least a very durable mid-rotation starter. So why has he at times allowed too many earned runs?

You're not going to tell me it's luck, are you?

Look, part of it is luck. Or maybe a better description would be randomness, which plays a much larger role in baseball (and life) than we'd like to admit. Cease has been fairly consistent in terms of the things he can control, and he does most of those things very well. Still, there has to be something else contributing to his volatile outcomes.

Cease is predominantly a 2-pitch pitcher, relying on his fastball and slider 80 to 85% of the time. This is fine when, as in 2022, his slider has an elite 125 Stuff+ grade with good command. But in the two years that Cease has seen an inflated ERA, his slider Stuff+ grade has dipped down to a just "very good" 115. The pitch remained an excellent whiff generator, with a swing and miss rate consistently around 43%, but when hitters did make contact, they hit it much harder in '23 and '25.

This extreme fluctuation is slightly tempered by expected wOBA, but the pitch was still clearly less effective on those down years.

Sliders are a feel pitch, so it's not unusual to see variance in shape and quality from one year to the next. But when you're throwing it nearly 50% of the time and have only one other go-to pitch, you're very limited when you don't have it working.

But there's good news: His fastball Stuff+ has improved in each of the last 5 years — it is now a solidly above average pitch — and his slider locations have been better than ever the last two years. Overall, 2025 feels much more like a "randomness" year than 2023, when there were more significant underlying issues.

The other positive, if you're a team who believes in your pitching development, is that there are plenty of options to diversify Cease's arsenal without harming effectiveness. The most obvious addition would be a cutter, which he has teased before but never really implemented. It has graded out well in a small sample, but even if it's not a "good" pitch on its own it allows him to be less predictable and keep the barrel off the rest of his pitches just by mere fact of its existence. We've seen that pitchers only need to throw a cutter 5-10% of the time to see a lift in outcomes on their other pitches. I would advise Cease to start approaching that mix from Day 1 — particularly against lefties, who tend to give him more trouble.

He also has a very funny and very slow changeup that he throws maybe once per game. It's incredibly effective because it comes out of nowhere, but it doesn't have much of a cascading effect because he doesn't throw it enough. If it's too gimmicky for his taste, there are other changeup grips he can experiment with. A reliable one would help him limit damage against lefties, though cutters tend to be platoon-neutral, so I'd still start there.

In sum: A lot of Cease's ERA variance is random; some of it has to do with slider inconsistency; his improved fastball and locations should mitigate that some; and he has room to mitigate it further through arsenal development. Combine that with an excellent track record of durability and you've got a tantalizing mix of floor and ceiling.

My take

So how do you put a price on a guy who is relatively young and extremely durable, has strong and stable peripherals, but has had inconsistent results?

One option is to offer a short contract with a high salary and an opt-out, which limits risk to the signing club and offers the player a nice cushion with the flexibility to hit the market again quickly off a better platform year. This is sensible, and many teams will be in on Cease under that framework.

That said, Camden Yards and the AL East are not exactly ideal environments to re-establish your value as a pitcher, and most publications are now predicting Cease to get a longer term deal, somewhere between 5 and 7 years with an average salary around $30 million. The Orioles should be aggressive in this range as well.

But I'm going to take this a step further and recommend a plan C: The Orioles should offer Dylan Cease an 8 year, $200 million contract.

That might sound crazy. Hear me out.

Cease's value is very hard to pin down because his ERA has fluctuated greatly, and it's been mediocre more often than it's been great. Many teams will balk at giving him "ace money" because you just can't count on ace-level results. $200 million feels like "ace money." Over 8 years, for the right pitcher, it's not.

This is close to, but not exactly, what you could call the "buy-out-the-guy's-career-at-a-little-less-than-you-think-it'll-be-worth" strategy. On the surface, it seems like the antithesis of good economics. Players almost always become free agents after the peak years on the aging curve, and while you can get great production and even good value on the front of a big deal, the backend is typically a loss. The more years you pay for, the more you're exacerbating that loss.

But tweak this concept with the intent of deferring the burden, and you can still come out fine. An 8/200 contract, which has an AAV of $25 million, never requires paying Cease like an ace, which would make it easier to stomach not regularly getting ace-like production. Offset it it with, say, a 10M signing bonus and a yearly disbursement of 30, 30, 30, 30, 20, 20, 15, 15 and the commitment on the back-end is small enough not to be a crippling burden should Cease wipe out at age 35.

At the same time, Cease and his agent (some guy named Scott Boras) would get the big number they're looking for, and they can say they didn't need to settle for a pillow contract, a precedent I'm sure Boras is not looking to turn into a standard. Both Cease and the Orioles gets stability and peace of mind. Each party knows exactly where the other stands. If, as some have argued, the Orioles' reported 4/180 offer to Corbin Burnes was an "insult" because players supposedly value length and sticker price, 8/200 must be a pretty massive compliment to Cease.

This strategy isn't without risk. Any significant free agent pitcher contract comes with risk. But this contract would reward Cease for his durability and the things he does well while keeping the Orioles from needing Cease to be their ace. It is effectively offering deferrals on a 6/200 contract while gaining two optional years of service if Cease continues to be effective at age 36 and 37.

Maybe it only takes 2/70 with an opt-out or a straightforward 6/150. That would be great. But I would be willing to buy out Cease's career at an AAV that never really prevents the team from adding other significant pieces. His combination of floor and upside makes him a uniquely attractive target for the Orioles at a number of price points.