Yankee Engineering As A Business Associate For Key star…

The White Sox rank among the biggest letdowns of the past five years, right up there with the Yankees. Their best season ended in a crushing loss to the Astros in the 2021 ALDS, as they were never able to turn a wealth of homegrown talent, both at the plate and on the mound, into meaningful contention. It seems the South Siders are prepared to demolish their stadium in advance of a protracted rebuild after what may have been their worst season to date, which saw them finish fourth in the division with more than 100 losses. Staff ace Dylan Cease is among the first names the Yankees should inquire about if no players are off-limits.

Among starters, Cease had one of the fastest four-seamers when he made his debut in the league in 2019. Even though he has dropped about two ticks off the heater, he has consistently made up for it with two absolutely devastating breaking balls. Since making his debut, he has placed among the top-20 in strikeout rates, demonstrating his ability to utilize that lethal arsenal to become one of the game’s premier strikeout artists.

With a 3.91 ERA and 4.5 fWAR over 165.2 innings in 2021, he had undoubtedly established himself as a front-line starter; however, 2022 was a breakout year that catapulted the young star into the public eye. Among them were a record 14 straight starts by Cease in which he allowed one earned run or less. In the end, he finished second in the Cy Young voting behind Justin Verlander thanks to his 2.20 ERA in 184 innings, which was third-best among qualified starters and 227 strikeouts, which was fifth-highest in MLB.

Matt Blake would love to get his hands on Cease as a pitcher. His eagerness to work in the lab to improve pitch shape and spin has helped him go from being a mediocre fastball pitcher in terms of vertical movement to one of the league’s best four-seamers, ranking in the 94th percentile in rise vs. average over the previous three years. And although he isn’t quite showing the league-topping drop he did in his rookie season, his curveball and slider still have excellent spin rates.

He’s a fascinating blend of wavery control but also impeccable command. By that I mean, he is prone to losing the strike zone for stretches as evidenced by a career walk rate in the double-digits as well as perennial placement among the league leaders in wild pitches. However, his ability to sequence his pitches, throwing them all out of the same slot and release point and often nailing identical aiming points on consecutive pitches makes him one of the best tunnelers of pitches in the game — a huge contributor to his elite strikeout and whiff rates.

He also possesses a deep knowledge of the way his pitches interact with each other, the lack of an appreciable horizontal component to the movement of his four-seamer, slider and curveball allowing him to spot all three pitches on the gloveside edge of the zone, with all three landing at substantially different vertical points when they reach the plate.

Check out these overlays of his fastball with each of the two breakers to get an idea of how well his pitches tunnel with each other. Here’s the fastball and slider:

All of this is what made Cease’s slight regression in 2023 eyebrow-raising. As I mentioned, his fastball comes in about two mph slower than his first seasons, and when batters don’t need to gear up quite as early for the fastball, it’s naturally accompanied by a drop-off in breaking ball effectiveness. What’s far more concerning has been the sharp disappearance of vertical tilt on his slider, losing over nine inches of break off its peak. With a slower fastball and blunted slider, it’s no wonder that hitters increased their contact rate by six points on his pitches in the zone, causing his swing runs to crater. At 27 years old, he’s a pitcher who should be hitting the peak of his prime years, which is what makes the degradation in Cease’s pitch quality and the resultant drop in results quite alarming.

Two things stand out about Cease’s 2022 campaign, and should be used as a roadmap to return him to his top form. For starters, Cease’s slider finished as the most valuable pitch in baseball, its 36 Statcast run value 11 runs better than the second-best pitch in the league (Shohei Ohtani’s sweeper). Second, Cease topped all pitchers in Statcast’s swing run value, his pitches generating a whopping 70 runs better than average when hitters swung. Much of this value accrued in the shadow and chase regions of the pitcher’s attack zone, meaning he was better than any other pitcher at getting hitters to swing and miss or generate weak contact on pitches on the edges or just out of the strike zone. If he can rediscover the break on his slider (one very similar to the slider Gerrit Cole throws, I might add), I think we could see swing runs and more broadly his overall effectiveness return to 2022 levels.

The Yankees are in need of starting pitching with Luis Severino, Frankie Montas and Domingo Germán hitting the free agent market, question marks looming over which version of Carlos Rodón and Nestor Cortes they will get in 2024, and the relative inexperience of Michael King and Clarke Schmidt. They have been most closely linked with Yoshinobu Yamamoto over recent weeks, and the Japanese ace is expected to be posted November 20th. Should they whiff on him as well as the other big names at the top of the free agent starting pitching market, the first place they should turn is the White Sox and Dylan Cease.