Dylan Cease's fastball showed up 3-plus ticks down to start the outing, the kind of red flag that usually means an early exit and a bad line. Instead he adjusted on the fly and turned it into one of the best starts of his career, per Eno Sarris, who tracked the velocity dip in real time.
Eno Sarris flagged the shaky fastball readings before Cease settled in and dominated anyway.
By the time it was over, Cease had a complete-game, one-hit shutout with 12 strikeouts, holding the Red Sox to a single leadoff double and nothing else. It's his 4th career shutout and the first one-hitter by a Blue Jays pitcher in roughly 16 years, and it dropped his ERA to 2.46, second in the AL behind only the Yankees' Cam Schlittler. The changeup was doing a lot of the damage, and Rob Friedman's pitch-tracking account caught one of the nastiest ones of the night.
A 79 mph changeup from Cease that froze a hitter mid-swing.
The strikeouts piled up fast once he found his rhythm, including a run through the 5th inning that ended with the sword celebration. Cease finished the night with swagger to match the stuff, and the highlight reel from the outing made the rounds instantly.
Cease racked up 2 strikeouts in the 5th inning, capped by a swing-and-miss sword.
What makes this start more than just a nice box score is the company it puts him in. According to Codify Baseball's tracking, only 3 pitchers have thrown a game this season with at least 8 innings, 11-plus strikeouts, zero earned runs and no more than 1 hit allowed: Reid Detmers back in May, Jacob Misiorowski in June, and now Cease has done it twice himself, once on July 8 and again on July 25.
The full list of pitchers who've hit that exact statistical threshold this season, with Cease appearing twice.
MLB pitchers with 8+ innings, 11+ strikeouts, 0 earned runs, and no more than 1 hit in a game this season: Reid Detmers on May 24 Jacob Misiorowski on June 12 Dylan Cease on July 8 🔥 Dylan Cease on July 25 🔥
Repeating a line like that once in a season is rare. Doing it twice in the same month, especially after fighting through diminished velocity for the first few innings, says more about Cease's ability to adjust mid-game than any single strikeout total does. He's already made his first career All-Star start this year, and outings like this are exactly why his name is squarely in the Cy Young conversation in the AL.
For fantasy and prop bettors, the takeaway is simple: Cease's strikeout stuff isn't showing any signs of slowing down, and his changeup in particular looks like a swing-and-miss weapon regardless of what the fastball is doing on a given night. Rob Friedman's follow-up pitch-mix roundup the next day put Cease's stuff right alongside filthy offerings from Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Nolan McLean, which is the kind of company that tends to stick.
The final line captured on video: shutout complete.