Right now, the only real bright spot in the Chicago White Sox rotation is the dominance of Lucas Giolito. He has become must-watch tv for every fan of White Sox baseball. After that, well it gets pretty unbearable. Reynaldo Lopez has been bad, Ivan Nova and Dylan Covey are inconsistent, and Manny Banuelos has been one of the worst pitchers in baseball. Dylan Cease will bring another hopefully stable pitcher to pair with Giolito whenever he gets the call to The Show. Which honestly, shouldn’t be too far from now.
Last night he had his best outing of the season. 7 innings of 2 run ball with 6 strikeouts. For the year he has a 3.26 ERA, 10.34 K/9, and a 3.26 BB/9. His fastball, curveball combo is straight up lethal. Being able to hit 99 late in the game and pair it with a 12-6 like this…
is pretty insane. People are speculating that he is only in Charlotte until the Super 2 date passes. Because this season started so early, that day is expected to be…today. The Super 2 rule is weird and the date always changes year to year but that’s a conversation for a different time. The point is, the date is here, or at least very close. I still think Dylan may get 1 or 2 more starts for Charlotte before he’s in Chicago and I would be surprised if he isn’t on the South Side by July.
Pitchers only have a limited number of innings per year in their arm. They front office decided it was wise to keep Michael Kopech down for what many thought to be far too long. While you can’t really control injuries, Kopech blowing out his elbow only saw him throw 14.1 IP in the bigs. It would be foolish to stow Cease in the minors for as long as they did with Kopech. Have him take his lumps now at the big league level so he can learn and be ready to go in 2020. He pitched just over 92 innings in 2017 between the White Sox and Cubs, then 123.3 last year just with the White Sox. So figure his innings limit to be anywhere from 150-175 this year. As of today he’s already thrown 47.0. Meaning he only has anywhere from 103-128 innings left for 2019. Call me crazy, but I think those innings should be used in Chicago. This isn’t even including the fact that he could IMMENSELY help a team that is just 2.5 games out of a Wild Card spot on the last day of May (that sounds weird to say).
I don’t believe that the White Sox will use the same plan for Cease as they did for Kopech. Michael even said that Dylan is a better pitcher than he was at this time last year. Call him up soon, watch him succeed, watch him fail, and most importantly, watch him learn.
