Dylan Cease gave John Schneider ugly rehab results Thursday, but the bigger news in Buffalo was how close the Blue Jays right-hander looked to returning.
In his first Triple-A rehab start, Cease allowed 5 runs over 4.0 innings for Buffalo. That part of the line was every bit as rough as it sounds.
He also gave up 6 hits and 1 walk, letting traffic build too often against Triple-A bats. For a starter this good, that jumps off the page.
Still, he missed bats. Cease struck out 6 and pushed his fastball to 98.9 mph, which was the number Toronto cared about more than anything else.
More important, he got to 75 pitches, a real starter workload for a rehab outing. That should put him in line to rejoin Toronto next week, even with his return still listed as TBD.
Cease has been on the 15-day injured list since May 25 with a mild left hamstring strain. Thursday was about getting through game speed, holding stuff, and waking up healthy the next day.
The box score went sideways, but the health checklist mostly did not. For a club trying to get one of its frontline arms back, that is the split that matters.
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The Blue Jays will take the workload over the line
That matters because Toronto is 30-33 and still has rotation spots to sort out in the days ahead. Getting Cease back would change the shape of that board fast.
Before the injury, Cease had given the Blue Jays a 3.05 ERA and 92 strikeouts. That is the kind of production that changes a series the minute he is back on the mound.
The underlying stuff backed it up, too. Cease's 36.0% whiff rate ranks in the 97th percentile, which is why Toronto can live with an ugly rehab line if the fastball looks normal.
This is also why nobody in Toronto is going to overreact to 1 bad night in Buffalo. Rehab starts are built to test the body first and clean up the command later.
The schedule adds to the read here. Toronto's probable-pitcher board still has open spots coming up, and Cease now looks much closer to filling 1 of them than he did a week ago.
John Schneider did not need perfection out of this outing. He needed to see Dylan Cease carry real velocity, real effort and real pitch volume without the hamstring barking.
That is what Toronto got, even with 5 runs hanging on the line. The rehab game went poorly on paper, but it still looked like a step toward getting Dylan Cease back next week.
Should the Blue Jays activate Dylan Cease next week?
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