Cease's deal tells us about the market -- but more about the Blue Jays
Anthony Castrovince
@castrovinceThe Toronto Blue Jays didn’t play like underdogs in the 2025 World Series, and they didn’t pay like underdogs intheir new agreement with Dylan Cease.
Canada’s only MLB franchise was inaccurately billed as the David to the Dodgers’ Goliath going into the Series, but it had been billed as a brewing behemoth by people inside the game for quite a while.
And now, on the heels of an American League pennant and a so-close-it-hurts finish in the Fall Classic, the Jays have unmistakably shown that, when it comes to their unfinished business, well, they mean business.
Big business, in this particular case.
A seven-year, $210 million pact with Cease -- even with deferrals that bring the “true” present-day value to something more like $182 million -- is a major commitment to a pitcher coming off a wobbly walk year. It’s the largest free-agent signing in Blue Jays history, surpassing the six-year, $150 million deal George Springer signed prior to 2021.
It’s a deal that tells us a lot about the modern game and, more importantly, about the state of the Blue Jays.
Cease had a 4.55 ERA in 2025. That’s not very good.
He had a 94 league- and ballpark-adjusted ERA+, or 6% below league average. That’s not very good, either.
He walked almost 10% of batters he faced, the third-worst rate among qualified starters. (Walks are bad.)
None of the above points to a top-of-the-market deal. And yet none of us expected anything less than a top-of-the-market deal for Cease, whoseBaseball Savant page has more red than a crime scene because of the strength of his whiff-inducing raw stuff. With a 3.46 xERA and 29.8% strikeout rate, Cease’s 2025 was like a house with good bones but a bad paint job.
It was a given that somebody was going to pay big money for Cease’s big potential, even if his final season in San Diego was far from the Cy-Young-conversation-caliber he had displayed in 2022 and 2024. A free-agent enterprise that was once oriented around past performance is more oriented these days around predictive possibility, and the soon-to-be-30-year-old Cease is a lot richer for it.
So that’s great for Dylan Cease. But again, he was going to get paid wherever he landed.
The fact that it’s the Blue Jays paying that big money is what’s really interesting about this pact.
The front end of the rotation was not necessarily a need for the Jays. Not after rookie Trey Yesavage showed up and rewrote the record books in the 2025 postseason and not after Shane Bieber surprisingly exercised his one-year, $16 million player option to stay with a team he had only been with for a few months.
Even if Bieber, entering his first full season following Tommy John surgery, had been intent on a short-term situation to build up his long-term value, you’d have to believe there was more than $16 million available to him in the open marketplace. He stayed with the Jays because he loved their coaching and culture.
That’s stuff that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, and the Blue Jays rightly touted their “toughness and togetherness” in the course of their fun run to the Fall Classic. There’s definitely something special going on in their locker room.
But there’s something substantial going on in their payroll department, too. A team with a connected clubhouse is dangerous. A team with a connected clubhouse and the deep pockets to back it is really, really dangerous.
“We’re no longer sneaking up on people,” Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro told me during the World Series. “I think that the league and players here know it's a great place to play. We’re just scratching at the surface. We have 7 million people watching us play throughout this country. It's like one-fifth of the country watching our games, which is remarkable. It's an incredible thing to consider the responsibility and the pride that comes with knowing that people thousands of miles away are still living and dying by our game.”
The Jays are just beginning to tap into what that reach represents. They’re just beginning to do the things that big-market behemoths do.
Things like extending your franchise cornerstone (Vladimir Guerrero Jr.) for half a billion bucks.
And blowing past the luxury tax threshold.
And adding strength to a strength, committing what might be the largest pitching pact signed this offseason to a guy who might not necessarily be your No. 1 starter in the new season.
Even if this deal is the extent of the Jays’ offseason expenditures, they will have made one of the winter’s bigger moves. But with Bo Bichette out there in the open market and Kyle Tucker a potential alternative should Bichette bolt and general manager Ross Atkins having openly addressed the possibility of the club bringing in someone other than Jeff Hoffman to close, it’s highly doubtful this is where the Jays’ major activity -- ahem -- Ceases.
When the Blue Jays were spurned by Shohei Ohtani (and even his dog) and Juan Soto in recent winters, it was deceptively easy to portray them as something other than a desired destination. But that enthralling World Series -- to say nothing of the season leading up to it -- earned them attention and appreciation. And the Cease deal illustrates that they’re ready, willing and able to throw their weight around.
Whether the Jays play like a juggernaut in 2026 remains to be seen. All we can say for certain now is that they’re acting like one. So much for that David vs. Goliath stuff.