The Chicago White Sox are three games away from a winter-long vacation. It has been a very bad season and it is going to take a lot of work for this team to get back into contention. Things went even worse than expected this year.
One part of that was the play of Dylan Cease. Of course, Cease was one of the best pitchers in the league during the 2022 season. He came in second place for the American League Cy Young Award because of how well he played. It was a season to be proud of.
Unfortunately, the White Sox didn't take advantage of that dominance as they only went 81-81 and came up short of the postseason. This year, they were expecting the team to be better and Cease to remain dominant.
Neither of those things happened. In fact, they went in the completely opposite direction. Cease had a bad year (by his standards) and the White Sox were one of the four worst teams in the league. It has been bad for the entire season.
The Chicago White Sox are looking for Dylan Cease to have a good year.
Cease did do really well in his most recent start. It came last weekend against the Boston Red Sox and he was brilliant. He went 7.0 innings and didn't give up a run. It ended up being a pitcher's duel as the White Sox won 1-0 late thanks to a Luis Robert Jr. home run.
That was his 32nd start of the season which made it three straight seasons of him reaching that milestone. That is considered to be a full season for a starting pitcher. It felt like a good time to shut it down and get ready for 2024 by starting the off-season.
Instead, however, Cease is going to make that 33rd start this weekend as the time lined up for him to do so on the typical five days of rest. He is going to start on Friday night against the San Diego Padres at Guaranteed Rate Field.
This is a good team he'll be facing so it will be fun to see how he handles that lineup. There is a bright future for Cease and he'd like to finish this difficult season on a really high note.