Dylan Cease of the White Sox reacts after giving up two runs to the Baltimore Orioles in the first inning at Oriole Park at Camden Yards on August 30, 2023 in Baltimore. (Getty Images)
Rob Carr/Getty
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Dylan Cease’s last season with the White Sox was, well, something.
Certainly not fun, as Cease told reporters at Wrigley Field Monday. Not when you’re trudging to the cadence of a death march toward 101 losses.
Not when you’re pitching to an ERA more than doubled to 4.58 over an American League best 33 starts.
“Last year wasn’t enjoyable really in any way,” Cease said.
“I just didn’t perform well.”
And the Sox? Oof.
“We had a good chance to compete. And we just didn’t put it together,” Cease said. “We had a really bad year. It led to the need to kind of redo everything.”
Which involved shipping Cease to the sunny skies of San Diego and the brighter outlook of a contender, for whom he will pitch when the Padres face the Cubs Wednesday at Wrigley Field. Cease takes a spiffty 2.55 ERA with 48 strikeouts and 14 walks over 42 2/3 innings, the kind of numbers teams who tried to trade for the 2022 Cy Young runner-up in the offseason expected, against a team that drafted him in the sixth round in 2014.
Meanwhile, the Sox pick up the pieces and rebuild without a talent they weren’t willing to payLike everything else, Cease took 2023 in stride, calmly and collected. A good teammate, he hated the losing, but not the Sox.
Now, he’s using his considerable talent for a good cause: helping the Padres chase a postseason goal. It beats chasing a goal of trying to avoid 100 defeats.
“It’s nice going into every game and feeling, not only competitive, but like you have a very good opportunity to win that game,” he said. “We have an abundance of talent here, and we play well in a lot of areas of the game. It’s really exciting to come to the ballpark. And with the Sox, I really feel like we had that talent, we just didn’t put it together. It’s been a really great experience going to San Diego so far.”
The Sox, meanwhile, are playing even worse than last season, when they started 7-21. They took their worst start ever, 8-27, into their game against the Rays Tuesday.
“We just didn’t play well,” Cease said. “It comes down to, did you throw the ball, did you throw strikes, did you field the ball, did you control the zone, did you hit. And in a lot of ways we just didn’t do a lot of things well in those areas.”