After a winter of rumors, White Sox ace Dylan Cease has finally been traded.
The San Diego Padres landed the star right-hander late Wednesday less than a week before the team opens its season with an early two-game series against the Los Angeles Dodgers in Seoul, Korea.
Cease, 28, had been coveted by several clubs, including the New York Yankees after the unexpected loss of No. 1 starter Gerrit Cole earlier this week with elbow inflammation.
To get Cease, the Padres sent a package of prospects across league lines to Chicago. The group includes Samuel Zavala, Steven Wilson, Drew Thorpe, and Jairo Iriarte, according to Jon Paul Morosi of MLB.com and Bob Nightengale of USA TODAY. News of the deal was first broken by Jon Heyman of The New York Post.
Cease led the American League with 33 starts last season but couldn’t prevent his club from finishing fourth in the five-team Central Division with a 61-101 record, 26 games out of first place and just five games ahead of the rock-bottom Kansas City Royals.
For a team that won the division crown as recently as 2021, the drop was dizzying – and the main reason for a personnel turnover that featured the exodus of a half-dozen pitchers, Cease included.
A fastball/slider pitcher who broke into the big leagues in 2019, Cease had been impressive this spring, posting a 2.16 earned run average and fanning 14 hitters in 8 1/3 innings pitched.
In his five-year tenure, all with the Chisox, he has a 43-35 record, 3.83 ERA, and average of 10.8 strikeouts per nine innings.
In 2022, his best year, he went 14-8 with a 2.20 ERA for the Sox.
The 6’2″ native of Milton, GA joins a San Diego staff reeling from the losses of starters Blake Snell, Michael Wacha, Nick Martinez and Seth Lugo plus star closer Josh Hader.
The revamped 2024 rotation is expected to feature Cease, holdovers Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish, and former Yankees Michael King and Randy Vasquez, both acquired in the trade that sent former batting king Juan Soto to the Bronx. Musgrove and Darvish suffered injury-riddled seasons in 2023.
Snell, still unsigned, won the National League’s Cy Young Award last season after leading the Padres in wins, strikeouts, earned run average, and WAR (wins against replacement).
Even if Cease rebounds from a mediocre season in 2023, the Padres face the difficult task of making up 18 games in the standings – especially after the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers added free-agent prizes Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto plus former Tampa Bay ace Tyler Glasnow.
San Diego slipped to 82-80 last season after a pre-season spending spree that lured All-Star infielder Xander Bogaerts for 11 years and $280 million.
The Padres will have Cease under team control for this season and next before he qualifies for free agency. He will earn $8,000,000 from San Diego this season, according to Spotrac.
A client of California-based super-agent Scott Boras, Cease will be making his first foray into the National League, where he will play half his games in pitcher-friendly Petco Park.
His name had been bandied about for months as first-year White Sox general manager Chris Getz dangled veterans for prospects in a rebuilding effort. One of his trades, with the Atlanta Braves, netted five players for one (relief pitcher Aaron Bummer).
According to Spotrac, San Diego’s $152,995,453 payroll ranks 14th among the 30 clubs. The same site suggests the rebuilding White Sox rank 18th at $116,673,333.