The Chicago Cubs should be looking to acquire Dylan Cease

The Chicago Cubs have a lot of money to spend and holes on their roster. One of the things they could use the most is pitching. Every team in the league needs more pitching right now but the Cubs could specifically use a starter.

On the other side of town, Dylan Cease might be available for the Chicago White Sox. The Sox got him as a prospect from the Cubs in a 2017 trade that also involved Jose Quintana and Eloy Jimenez. This is a trade that was bad for the Cubs but the White Sox didn’t take advantage either.

It would be the baseball world coming full circle if the Sox sent Cease back to the Cubs this week in a trade where they thought more about the future. He would make the Chicago Cubs rotation that much better and he is a cheaper option too.

Adding a guy like Cease would still mean that they could go for someone else in free agency or another trade. This is going to be a good team and they plan on being active this off-season. They didn’t hire Craig Counsell to be their new manager so that they could pretend to be the Milwaukee Brewers.

The Chicago Cubs would be smart to add a player like Dylan Cease.

The White Sox actually did an okay job developing Dylan Cease. When the Cubs let him go, he was a talented prospect but super raw. In the White Sox organization, he found a way to take advantage of the tools he has.

In 2022, Cease was the runner-up for the American League Cy Young Award. The White Sox weren’t amazing that year but they were certainly better than the disaster that they were in 2023. Cease took a step back as a member of that horrible team last year.

When you are on a 100-loss baseball team, it is almost impossible to pitch as well as he did in 2022. There isn’t a pitcher alive who would enjoy playing for that team and sometimes it shows with the play on the field.

The Cubs would be an upgrade in 2024 in terms of compete-level and Cease could absolutely thrive in an environment like that. He has already proven that he can be great on a great team as he was in the short time that the Sox were good.

The prospects needed to make this trade are absolutely in the Cubs system, they just have to decide that they really want Cease. All signs point to it being a very good idea.