Cease came into this season with a reputation already built: a guy who racks up whiffs at a rate almost nobody else in the sport can match. The Blue Jays paid up for that reputation, handing him a 7-year, $210 million deal last offseason, the biggest free-agent contract in franchise history. Sunday's milestone is exactly the kind of return on investment Toronto was banking on.
The stuff that gets him there hasn't changed. Cease lives off a slider that makes hitters look silly and, increasingly, a changeup he's leaned on to keep them off balance. Rob Friedman's mound-level clips from Sunday captured both pitches doing damage in the same outing.
An 80 mph changeup from Cease that had the hitter fooled.
That changeup was just the appetizer. A few innings later, Friedman posted the slider reel, the pitch that's been Cease's signature bat-misser for years now.
A sequence of Cease sliders buckling hitters.
By the fifth inning Cease had 7 strikeouts, racking up 2 more in that frame alone. He kept pushing from there, and eventually got to the number everyone was watching for: strikeout 200 on the season, complete with Cease hustling to grab the ball himself afterward.
Cease records his 200th strikeout of the season and makes sure to keep the ball.
According to MLB, it's the sixth straight season Cease has cleared 200 strikeouts, a stretch that puts him in rare company. A Codify Baseball graphic circulating Sunday showed just how exclusive that club is among active pitchers: Max Scherzer leads with 9 such seasons, Justin Verlander has 8, Chris Sale has 7, and Cease is tied with Gerrit Cole at 6.
The moment got a little bonus comedy from teammate Andres Giménez, who mimed chucking the milestone ball into the stands before handing it back, a bit that made the rounds right alongside the real footage.
Giménez fake-throws Cease's 200th strikeout ball into the crowd.
None of this is a fluke season for Cease, it's the continuation of one of the most durable strikeout stretches in the sport right now. Toronto is currently sitting atop the AL strikeout leaderboard because of him, and with plenty of season left, the number 200 is likely just a waypoint, not the finish line.