PHILADELPHIA – The Toronto Blue Jays had a vision for Dylan Cease when they signed him to a $210-million, seven-year deal over the winter, and he’s living it in a Cy-Young-Award-calibre season.
“I feel more versatile now,” said the ace right-hander, who in his last six starts has allowed just four earned runs on 17 hits and 12 walks with 56 strikeouts in 43 innings. “I feel like I’m mixing in more variety of pitches and I feel I’m getting them to better spots, too. Some days in the past, it would really just be very slider, fastball heavy and if I didn’t have one or the other, it would be a massive grind. Now I can mix in a first-pitch curveball and go to sweeper and go to sinker, things I haven’t historically done very well in the past. That’s helping me just diversify my pitches and be less predictable.”
The way the Blue Jays and Cease worked together to refine his game isn’t a direct template for the club to follow with newly acquired Jose Soriano, who debuted by allowing two runs, one earned, over 4.2 innings in Friday’s 5-4 win over the Philadelphia Phillies. But there are parallels in the way the club is aiming to take a pitcher with an elite repertoire and help push him to an even higher level of performance.
“Tremendous stuff, they both can spin the ball, both have tremendous fastballs, their numbers, the one thing that stands out is always the walks,” said pitching coach Pete Walker. “Dylan’s walks are still kind of there, but I think the change of speeds has helped him get deeper into games. Soriano will be a similar process where we’re trying to get him deeper into games and throw more strikes at times, to limit long at-bats. With Dylan we didn’t sacrifice strikeouts. He changes speeds with a changeup. His delivery is in a good place. He’s working the bottom half of the zone quite well. With Jose, he’s had a great track record, he’s an elite pitcher as it is, but there seems to be a little more room to get better. We hope to tap into that.”
Friday’s performance against the Phillies, when Soriano allowed four hits and three walks, struck out three and threw 94 pitches, had shades of some early-season Cease outings, when he was still trying to piece together all his weapons. He got 18 whiffs, 12 of them on his knuckle curve, sat 96.7 m.p.h. with his four-seam fastball but relied more on his sinker, which averaged 96.2. He also worked in his splitter and slider, giving the Phillies more to think about.
Manager John Schneider said some of their initial conversations have been about “not being on the edges (of the strike zone) so much, and trying to dominate the 1-1 and the 0-0 counts,” and Soriano seemed to take that to heart, with 17 first-pitch strikes to 20 batters and eight strikes in 11 1-1 counts. A Jesus Sanchez error in the second that led to the first Phillies run likely prevented Soriano from getting through five, but the Blue Jays also plan to adjust things like catcher targets, starting small and letting the 27-year-old righty guide the process.
“It took Dylan a little bit of time to get to this point and to go and execute certain pitches in certain spots, to say OK, I don’t need to abort and go back to the fastball and slider like I’ve been doing my whole career. Hopefully that rubs off and that’s a whole conversation,” said Schneider. “You want to kind of let him do what he’s comfortable with, but at the same time, offer some suggestions as to what we think may make him better. There’ll be a bit of back and forth. He’s a different dude than Dylan, there was a lot of back and forth with Dylan, right? Like, in the mind of Dylan is a special place. But I think that there are some parallels there that can hopefully be picked up pretty quick.”
Walker echoed those sentiments, saying that while Soriano is open to the Blue Jays’ ideas, “when a pitcher first gets here, I’ve never been one to be like, hey, this is what we’re going to do, this is the way you need to do it, because that could be the kiss of death if it doesn’t work.”
“Our vision for him is to be an elite strike-thrower, to locate his fastball and breaking ball at will, he’s got a tremendous split and to be dominant for nine innings,” Walker continued. “Right now, it’s attacking some small things. It could be catcher targets, approaching that a little differently. And then maybe some fine-tuning pitch usage. Other than that, we’re going to keep it relatively simple for him where he doesn’t feel overwhelmed.”
The Blue Jays grinded out four runs against Zack Wheeler to back Soriano, getting an Andres Gimenez homer in the second, sacrifice flies from Alejandro Kirk in the third and the sixth, the latter after a 15-pitch at-bat by Nathan Lukes that ended with a single. Lukes also had an RBI single in the fourth, while Josh Smith had three hits, including a homer in the eighth that made it 5-2.
Still, after the Blue Jays bridged from Soriano to the ninth with Mason Fluharty, Lazaro Estrada, Brendon Little and Matt Waldron, Tyler Rogers had to survive a nervous ninth with Louis Varland unavailable. After he loaded the bases with none out, one run crossed on Trea Turner’s fielder’s choice and another came home on Bryce Harper’s RBI single off Ernie Clement’s glove at second. A Luis Arraez walk loaded the bases again before Alec Bohm hit into another fielder’s choice, with Clement throwing home for the second out, and Rogers then rallied to get Brendon Marsh on a grounder to second, a play that survived replay to end the game.