ARLINGTON, Texas — A calamitous season of Blue Jays starting-pitching health took one more turn Saturday when Dylan Cease flew to Toronto for an MRI of his right shoulder.
Cease has been experiencing what he described to Blue Jays manager John Schneider as “fatigue, not pain” on Sunday for a few weeks. A dramatic velocity drop during an abbreviated start on Friday spurred the club to send him for the imaging.
The Blue Jays expect to have results sometime Sunday night, at which point they’ll determine next steps. What’s certain now is Cease won’t make his next scheduled start on Wednesday in Baltimore.
“Just wanting to see if there’s anything tied to that, the velo drop,” Schneider said. “Not expecting anything crazy. But we’ll take it a day at a time.”
Cease’s stuff has been trending downward for weeks, but over 2.2 innings on Friday he averaged the lowest four-seam fastball velocity — 93.6 m.p.h. — of his career by nearly a full mile per hour.
At 91.1 m.p.h., Cease’s first pitch of the game was the slowest fastball of his eight-season career. The record didn’t stand long, as the next pitch he threw was 90 m.p.h. Of the nearly 9,000 fastballs Cease had thrown in the majors entering the night, only three registered lower than 92 m.p.h.
Cease gained velocity as the outing went on and his fastball averaged 94.2 m.p.h. in his third and final inning. But that’s still well below the 97-98 m.p.h. he was averaging in starts as recently as July.
Cease’s command has also suffered of late. He set a season high in walks on Friday and has issued 11 free passes over his last two starts — the same total as in his five starts prior.
Cease has thus far chalked these developments up to it being late in a long season. Speaking Sunday, Schneider estimated that the right-handed pitcher has been dealing with his shoulder fatigue for “a couple of weeks” now and that the sensation is a new one for him in his career.
“It wasn’t alarming enough to say, ‘Hey, I can’t pitch.’ He was hoping to kind of come out of it and just really hasn’t bounced back,” Schneider said. “So, we said, ‘All right, let’s take a look at it.’”
Cease will rejoin the club this week in Baltimore and the Blue Jays aren’t yet ruling him out from starting during next weekend’s season-finale series at home against the Cincinnati Reds. But if Toronto has been statistically eliminated from the post-season by that point, there would be no reason to take the risk.
Cease’s shoulder issue is the latest unfortunate development in a disastrous string of them for Blue Jays starting pitchers. Bowden Francis and Jose Berrios were both lost to Tommy John surgery during spring training. Cody Ponce ruptured his right ACL only three innings into his first start. Max Scherzer (forearm, ankle, back, thumb) and Shane Bieber (forearm, shoulder) each missed over half the season.
Trey Yesavage began the year on the IL with a shoulder issue and has spent the last six weeks there following knee surgery. Patrick Corbin (shoulder) and Jameson Taillon (forearm, elbow) were both brought in mid-season as reinforcements but have since been lost for the year. Even minor-league depth starter Jake Bloss has been limited to only 11 starts due to Tommy John recovery and a shoulder strain.
The Blue Jays are throwing a bullpen day started by Spencer Miles and built around Spencer Arrighetti on Sunday against the Rangers followed by another started by Trey Yesavage on Monday. Max Scherzer will start Tuesday while Wednesday’s pitching plan is now — as ever in this nightmare Blue Jays pitching season — TBD.
