Dylan Cease enters the season as the White Sox's No. 4 or No. 5 starter, but he came into the spring the No. 1 starter I wanted to watch in Cactus League action.
Spring training games don't have reliable velocity readings, and the desert air isn't conducive to guys who pitch backward, so there's only so much you can take away from most pitching performances, at least from this distance.
With Cease, though, his main point of emphasis should be clear from the start. He needed to work on his fastball command, and in a very specific way. For just about the entirety of his rookie season, he could not throw the fastball low and away to right-handed hitters. Here's what that looks like on a heat map:
Granted, that's not a skill in terribly high demand due to the high-fastball/curve combination that's sweeping the nation, but White Sox catchers indeed called low-and-away fastballs from time to time. There was just something in his delivery that physically prevented his body from getting one there, and it put him in tough situations from which he struggled to escape. As a kicker, he also had some cut on his fastballs that he didn't care for.
When diagnosing the issue, the phrase he kept coming back to was "too rotational," which I imagined to be an oscillating fan that twists pasts 150 degrees to blow cool air into a closet for 15 seconds.
One couldn't accuse Cease of misdirected energy on Wednesday. James McCann set up glove-side for Cease against Milwaukee's righty-heavy lineup, and Cease hit that spot over ...
... and over ...
… and over …
… and over …
… and over …
… and over …
… and over …
… and over …
… and over …
… and over …
… and over again.
I thought about not including all of these, but the drumbeat of GIFs simulates the monotony of tallying good fastballs from wayward ones on my scratchpad. He threw a couple dozen fastballs, and while not all of them got strikes, I counted only two, maybe three, that took McCann's mitt where it didn't want to go. By and large, the misses qualified as quality ones.
It wasn't the only shot he had in his bag. He was able to get in on the hands of the couple lefties Milwaukee threw out there, and when the lineup turned over, McCann set up armside a few times, and Cease found the vicinity there as well.
This is all to show that when Cease says after the game ...
“I was dotting down and away really good and I was throwing sliders off of that, so I was able to get ahead and put (them) away,” Cease said of the inning. [...]
“That was probably the best I’ve ever commanded my fastball,” Cease said. “Really for most of the spring, my fastball command has been good, so it’s just a continuation of the process I’m working on.”
... you can believe him.
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Cease's curveball got him in trouble more than anything. He hung the first one he threw to Lorenzo Cain for a double into the left-field corner, and Keston Hiura resoundingly rejected Cease's first pitch of the fourth inning by sending it over the batter's eye. When you hear that Arizona is a tough place to throw sharp breakers, this is what it looks like.
Cease got the better of Hiura in the first plate appearance, sneaking a slider past him on 1-0, then firing a sequence of three outside-corner fastballs. He swung over a low-and-away fastball, fouled back an up-and-away fastball, then swung through a third consecutive fastball that had a little bit of that cut Cease is trying to conquer.
Hiura got the last laugh, though, and it took me back to the first time I saw them lock horns. It was in April 2018, with Cease pitching for the Winston-Salem Dash and Hiura DHing for the Carolina Mudcats. Their battles followed a similar sequence. Cease had Hiura way off balance the first time up, but had a better tracking of his pitches the next time around.
That was the first loud contact of that afternoon, and Cease's start went off the rails shortly after.
The bigger Brewers seemed to home in on his go-to pitch along a similar timeline, making more contact in the fourth inning. Besides Hiura's blast, Cease gave up a topped infield single, an Avisaíl García chopper off the plate, ending with a lineout to Daniel Palka in right field, all on fastballs.
If Cease were pitching deeper into the game, you might see more sliders in the fifth to throw them off his scent, but spring training ramp-up rules meant he had to stop after four. That was more than enough time to see what he needed to show, and the line (4 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 5 K) reflects that. A better Cease starts with better fastball command that makes hitters more vulnerable to his breaking pitches. If there's another Lucas Giolito-like turnaround in store, the best kind of Cease may not need much else to make his 2020 a productive one.
