Padres fans won’t miss Dylan Cease as much as people think

The way some people talk about Dylan Cease leaving San Diego, you’d think the Padres just watched peak Jacob deGrom walk out the door for nothing. Nationally, there’s been a lot of hand-wringing and “how could they let this guy go?” energy around his exit. Locally? Padres fans are a little more honest about what Cease actually was in 2025 — and what he wasn’t.

The Toronto Blue Jays gave the entire offseason a jolt by stepping up with a massive commitment to Cease, locking him into a seven-year, $210 million deal.

Whether Cease is overrated depends on how much weight you’re still giving that 2022 season. That year, he was legitimately filthy, finishing second in AL Cy Young voting and looking every bit like a budding ace. The problem is that for two of the three seasons since, the results haven’t come close to matching that reputation. At some point, the “ace” label has to be backed up by more than one outlier year and a bunch of strikeout highlights on social media.

Padres fans are right not to panic over Dylan Cease’s exit

On paper, the stuff still looks the part. Cease misses bats, piles up strikeouts and can make even good lineups look foolish when the slider is biting. But look a little closer and you see why Padres fans aren’t exactly in mourning. His ERA sat in the mid-4s in both 2023 (4.58) and 2025 (4.55). The same slider that fuels the strikeouts also fuels deep counts, high walk totals and too many stressful innings.

That’s the core of the “Cease is overrated” argument: the gap between reputation and results. He strikes out a ton of hitters, yes, but he also puts a ton of hitters on base for free. His elite year is getting further and further in the rearview mirror, and the diminishing returns since then make it fair to question whether that version is ever coming back consistently.

To be fair, the pro-Cease case isn’t nothing. He takes the ball, he chews innings, and on any given night he can still look like the best pitcher in the ballpark. In a vacuum, that has real value. 

But Padres fans don’t live in a vacuum. They live in a world where payroll space actually matters, and where betting big on a “maybe” version of Cease was always going to be risky. If you’re going to commit serious money and years, you want a little more certainty. The biggest problem for the Padres is how to replace him.

So no, Padres fans won’t miss Dylan Cease as much as people think. They saw the full picture — the electric nights, the frustrating walks, the uneven results — and they know this isn’t some franchise-defining loss. It’s just a really good, but also a flawed pitcher moving on.