After his longest start of a ‘grinding’ season, Dylan Cease expects to finish strong for the Chicago White Sox – The Denver Post

The Milwaukee Brewers had runners on second and third with no outs in the fifth inning Sunday against the Chicago White Sox.

Trailing by two runs, Sox starter Dylan Cease was focused on keeping his team in the game.

He got Brice Turang to pop out to shortstop Elvis Andrus and Tyrone Taylor to pop out to first baseman Andrew Vaughn. After intentionally walking Christian Yelich to load the bases, Cease struck out William Contreras.

“It seemed like they were starting to sit soft, so we mixed in some more heaters and fortunately it worked out,” Cease said.

Cease was sharp, but the game got away from the Sox late in a 7-3 loss in front of 24,495 at Guaranteed Rate Field.

The Brewers scored five runs in the final two innings against the Sox bullpen on the way to sweeping the three-game series. All of the offense for the Sox came during a three-run ninth.

It’s the first time the Brewers swept the Sox in Chicago in a series of at least three games since April 7-10, 1986, at old Comiskey Park.

Cease allowed two runs on five hits with seven strikeouts and two walks (one intentional) in a season-high seven innings.

“The first couple of innings I was sort of feeling my way through it,” Cease said. “Then once I started to get a little bit more aggressive and just driving it, it seemed to get me in a good rhythm.”

It was his longest outing since a complete-game, one-hit shutout on Sept. 3, 2022, against the Minnesota Twins at Guaranteed Rate Field.

Manager Pedro Grifol said Cease was “on top of his game” Sunday. The fifth served as the perfect example.

“He commanded the baseball and he used his fastball,” Grifol said. “When we ended up walking Yelich, he threw three fastballs to Contreras. He normally mixes in a couple of sliders somewhere, especially with somebody we’ve been attacking with sliders. He kind of flipped the script a little bit today. He used his fastball a ton and commanded it.

“If he can do that, we’ll see some consistency like this. Because it’s an above-average fastball. It becomes probably plus-plus when he starts commanding it and his other stuff becomes even better.”

The runner-up in American League Cy Young Award voting in 2022, Cease is 5-6 with a 4.32 ERA in 25 starts this season.

“That’s just the nature of the beast sometimes,” Cease said. “All it takes is getting out of sync a little bit and without realizing it, you reinforce bad habits and then it can be difficult to make those adjustments. Because at the same time you’re still having to compete and get guys out at the major-league level.

“A season like this for me has been a lot of grinding and sort of feeling like I’ve put Band-Aids on things. But I’m at a point now where I feel like I’ve learned a lot from it and I’m expecting to finish pretty strong.”

Cease described 2022 as “pretty effortless.”

“I was in that flow state most of my starts,” he said. “This year it’s been more working through things and figuring things out.

“But that’s a part of the game. You still have to show up and perform. There’s still seven starts, something like that (left this season). I’m looking forward to it.”

Cease said there have been plenty of takeaways along the way.

“You learn a lot of what works and what doesn’t work and what cues work and what thoughts work and all kinds of different stuff,” he said. “At the end of the day, the most ideal state to be in is one where there is not a lot of thinking and it’s just muscle memory. A year like this for me, I’m gaining all that information.

“For the end of this season and next season, I’ll now know if I’m yanking or this goes out of line, this could be one of three issues I had (in 2023). So it just builds on it.”

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