MINNEAPOLIS -- The Blue Jays’ best hitter and best pitcher each poses a big, philosophical question.
Each year, we tend to land back on the same question with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Would you rather have a .325 hitter with 25 home runs or a .275 hitter with 40 home runs?
Dylan Cease has his own version of this now. Would you rather have five innings with 10 strikeouts, or seven innings with seven strikeouts?
Saturday’s performance in the Blue Jays’ 11-4 win over the Twins at Target Field landed Cease closer to the latter. With seven K’s over seven innings of four-run ball (three earned), Cease gave the Blue Jays the length they wanted, but the line doesn’t look quite as dominant after a pair of runs scored on another messy defensive play in the second when Guerrero threw past a covering Cease at first and two Twins scampered home.
This is the type of line that excites Cease, though.
“Absolutely. Today felt really gritty,” Cease said. “Maybe not the best stuff, maybe not the best command, but I felt really good about going deep and giving the ‘pen a little break, just putting us in a better position. I feel really good about this.”
Each player is capable of the dream answer to these big questions, which is “both,” but we need to live in reality. Vladdy showed us “both” in the 2025 postseason, but unless you’re Barry Bonds, those numbers just aren’t possible across a full 162-game season. Cease has shown us that he’s capable of working deep into games and still racking up the strikeouts, but that’s such a narrow pathway to success.
“Me, personally, I always value the length of a starter rather than strikeouts,” manager John Schneider said. “If we can find that middle ground with him, that would be awesome. I think we’re getting close. He’s understanding it. I’d much rather see seven innings with six strikeouts than five with 15. He can do both.”
Cease is on board. Frankly, it’s one of the biggest reasons he signed here. Cease knows his own game better than anyone, and from the very beginning of the Blue Jays attempting to court him this offseason, Cease told the organization that he wants to be more consistent.
Everyone knows Cease is talented enough to win Cy Young Awards and completely dominate opposing lineups, but Cease -- like everyone around him -- wants to see these starts go deeper.
“Every time he’s had a pitch count, he’s always been like, ‘Hey, I want one more,’” Schneider said. “He’s shown that he’s durable. You can ride him when he’s out there. You can bank on him around 100 pitches every time. He’s shooting for six, seven, eight innings. That’s his mentality right now.”
This is Cease’s first time going a full seven innings with the Blue Jays. He pitched six once, on April 15 against the Brewers, but otherwise it has been a lot of starts in the range of 5 1/3 innings.
“After the fifth, I told [Schneider] I was going seven, but obviously that’s up to him,” Cease said. “I wasn’t sure, but after I got through the sixth and nobody came over to me, I was like, ‘All right, I guess we’re going seven.’ At that point, it’s my job to get through seven.”
Schneider often talks about “middle counts” with Cease. Not the first pitch of the at-bat and not the 0-2 count where Cease can rip off his nearly unhittable slider, but the counts that come in-between.
These have been the big focus for Cease when he’s working with pitching coach Pete Walker. The simple version is that Cease needs to steal a few quick outs along the way. If he’s doing that, then he can lean into his strikeout stuff against other hitters.
“In one-strike counts, it’s not trying to strike the guy out with that pitch and make it nasty,” Schneider said. “Then, in the 1-0 and 2-0 counts, can you throw a sinker instead of a four-seamer? Can you throw a 2-1 changeup for a quick out to end the at-bat right there and say, ‘OK, this isn’t a strikeout’? That adds up to 10 or 15 pitches, which is usually another inning.”
Saturday’s version works, though, when the offense wakes up just in time. That’s who the Blue Jays should be, and it’s who they were in 2025, a team that just needs to be kept in the game long enough to pounce. The Blue Jays will take Cease’s dominant days with a smile, but deeper days like these should be awfully kind to his win column.