00:00Dylan Cease was at 99 pitches through four and a third innings yesterday.
00:05Cease only lasted five innings, but Dylan Cease K-12 in Anaheim last night.
00:09Dylan Cease is pacing Major League Baseball right now in punch outs.
00:14And through five turns in the rotation, Dylan Cease has 44 Ks in 25 and two thirds innings.
00:20He's got a 2.10 ERA.
00:22Opponents are hitting 200 against him, and he has yet to be barreled, I think.
00:27No homers against Dylan Cease so far.
00:30In his front five turns.
00:31So my take for you, there was only one guy last year, and the last guy to do that before
00:35that was Spencer Strider in his 280K season, I believe, in 2023.
00:39I think Dylan Cease has a 250 strikeout season.
00:42What's your take on that?
00:44It's kind of hard to argue right now.
00:47I mean, just look at the hitter reactions.
00:51And this is one where you just, you can look at all the metrics.
00:55They're all off the charts, right?
00:56Opponents are chasing 40% of the time.
00:59It's one of the highest figures you're going to see from a starting pitcher.
01:01And as a result, they're striking out 40% of the time.
01:06But I think the biggest thing with him is that it looks like the stuff across the board is just
01:13ratcheted up a little bit.
01:15And then with Cease now, he's effectively wild.
01:18When he's off a little bit, I think you see him get just wild and take himself out of situations
01:23here.
01:24He's getting himself back into count.
01:25It's like, yes, he's still walking hitters at a pretty high clip.
01:29But for the most part, he's able to turn the page and lock back in, whether it's getting back into
01:33account or when that back gets away from him, saying, all right, take first base.
01:37I'm just going to strike the next guy out.
01:38And that's like the Blake Snell thing that we had seen through the stretches where he was so good as
01:42well.
01:43I think he's going to get pretty darn close to that.
01:46And I just don't see how he doesn't.
01:49Because, again, he is going a little bit deeper into outings and giving himself more opportunities to rack up these
01:55kids.
01:55Was it two outings already with 12 kids this year?
01:57Yeah.
01:59So we're not sitting here saying like, oh, I really don't think anybody watching or listening to this show right
02:05now is saying, you know, come on, be more gutsy.
02:08Give us 300 punch outs.
02:09300 punch outs is probably a thing of the past at this point.
02:12And honestly, it went away post-COVID, I think.
02:15If you're looking at post-COVID baseball, there have been three 250K seasons.
02:21Garrett Cole in 2022, he punched out 257.
02:24In 2023, Spencer Strider struck out 281.
02:28And then last year, Garrett Crochet struck out 255.
02:31So we are lucky to maybe get one guy at 250 punch outs.
02:36I'm not going to push it to 300 because that's unrealistic.
02:39This is take theater.
02:41Notice the bottom ticker does not say hot take theater.
02:44That's why I push it to 250.
02:46There are a couple other guys that could flirt with that.
02:48I have no idea what the Brewer usage of Jacob Mizorowski is going to be.
02:52But Mizorowski right now is north of 40 punch outs already.
02:55A couple other guys near the top of the league.
02:57Gavin Williams is at 40 strikeouts.
02:59Jose Soriano at 39Ks through five turns.
03:02Sanchez is at 39.
03:03Schlittler is at 36.
03:04I think the only guy, honestly, with Cease, just based on limitations and can you go, can you throw enough
03:10innings, can you make enough starts,
03:11the only guy that can maybe flirt with 250 this year is probably Sanchez, the way that he has started
03:18and the way that he has guys off kilter.
03:21But Cease just has way more potent strikeout stuff.
03:25And that slider and the Bugs Bunny changeup, just insane.
03:31What's going on right now, man?
03:33Yeah.
03:33So, of course, we had the crochet last year, 255.
03:36The crazy one to me is like looking at some of the 300s that we've actually had like in this
03:43lifetime.
03:44It's just I almost forgot that Justin Verlander got to 300 in 2019.
03:50That's a pretty crazy number for him to get to.
03:53But I agree.
03:54Like, I think you could push it maybe to 260, 265.
03:57But that would still be like 30 strikeouts more, 40 strikeouts more than Dylan Cease's career high at 224.
04:04So I think you could push it a little higher.
04:08I think you could get a little bit edgier.
04:10But I still think that's a pretty crazy call out because, again, even Tarek Skubel last year was 9K shy
04:16of the 250 plateau.
04:18And that was a pretty perfect pitching season.
04:20Yeah.
04:21And Skubel, you know, Skeens could maybe get there.
04:24But I don't know.
04:24It doesn't really seem like Skeens has the K stuff that I guess we were anticipating.
04:29Honestly, I thought Crochet could repeat.
04:30But can you like we've got about a minute left in this segment.
04:33Can you shed some light on why you think this is happening to Crochet right now?
04:37Because Garrett Crochet has struggled mightily in a couple of different starts now, like major, major blips on the radar.
04:43It's wild.
04:44You know, I think it just shows you how hard it is to just consistently be great.
04:48I think a little bit of it has just been the execution side of things.
04:53And, yeah, I mean, you look at the expected ERA, expected batting average, both are in the 20th percentile in
04:58Major League Baseball.
04:59And I wish I had a specific answer.
05:01But when you look at just the heat maps of where the pitch locations are, like he loves that cutter,
05:06right?
05:06And that cutter has been over the heart of the plate a lot more than it has been in the
05:11past this year.
05:12And that's a pitch he throws nearly 30 percent of the time.
05:14You look at the sinker.
05:15That's a pitch that usually likes to wear out the bottom of the zone and working off the plate away.
05:19That's been closer towards the center of the plate more frequently.
05:22So I think it's fallen behind in counts and then a lot of misses over the middle that have him
05:27just, you know,
05:27not really able to leverage that big time swing and miss stuff that usually works in different directions.
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