With De Facto Deadline Looming, Cubs Remain Interested in Padres Ace Dylan Cease

[Matthew Trueblood]

Deadlines spur action, and when the qualifying offer came into being in 2012, it made Opening Day into one—albeit to a very minor degree. Now, that clock is ticking loudly for teams interested in the Padres' ace.

Image courtesy of © Geoff Burke-Imagn Images

The Cubs are one of multiple teams still checking in with the Padres on Dylan Cease in the final hours before Opening Day, according to league sources. We already knew that the team had made calls to free agents Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson this month, as they try to amass sufficient depth to survive a long season they hope will include a trip to the playoffs. Cease has never entirely fallen off their radar, though, and the Padres have not ruled out a last-minute trade of their ace righthander. Notably, the team named Michael King as their Opening Day option, a move one source with another potential suitor said was informed by the league's strong desire for teams to announce their starters for Opening Day early and stick to that plan for marketing purposes.

While Cease would check every possible box on a Cubs wishlist for a last-second infusion of front-end rotation help, there are hurdles to clear. Owen Caissie, the team's slugging outfield prospect, has diminished trade value right now, as he deals with significant injuries that threaten to compromise the power element central to his game. The Cubs would need to be willing to trade one of their other top prospects in the high minors (Kevin Alcántara, James Triantos, or Moises Ballesteros) or give up as many as three valuable pieces in exchange for Cease, and they don't seem inclined to do so thus far.

One possibility the team has floated, sources said, involves trading potential relief ace Porter Hodge as part of a package, perhaps alongside a high-minors arm and a further-off positional prospect. The team would backfill Hodge's role as a setup man to Ryan Pressly by moving Ben Brown to the bullpen, where his stuff might play best, anyway. San Diego has had interest in Hodge in the past, but at this late stage, a source familiar with their thinking said they would prefer to get a majors-ready starter to replace Cease directly.

The situation will quickly come to a head over the next 24 to 36 hours, because under the rules about qualifying offers and free-agent draft pick compensation, Opening Day acts as a meaningful deadline. To be able to offer Cease (who becomes a free agent at season's end) the qualifying offer and get a pick when he departs via free agency, a team must acquire him before Thursday. Therefore, Cease's trade value will drop (if only incrementally) if Thursday comes and he's still a member of the Padres.

Brinksmanship at exactly this stage of the offseason is nothing new for San Diego president of baseball operations A.J. Preller. He's pulled off trades on the eve of Opening Day twice in his decade-long tenure, acquiring Craig Kimbrel ahead of the 2015 season and Taylor Rogers just before the 2022 campaign. (That the Cubs and Dodgers have already technically opened the season, in Tokyo, does not affect this deadline, a league source said.) Because rosters need to be trimmed and out-of-options players often hit the waiver wire, Opening Day can also be a bit of a deadline in that it compels final decisions to be made—including momentous ones like a Cease trade would be.

If Cease remains a Padre Thursday, he's not likely to be on the block again until July, at the earliest. San Diego is not a team looking to sell. They just need to manage the tricky situation of a bloated payroll, ownership uncertainty, and three stars who are impending free agents. The Cubs are not the only team to talk to the Padres recently about Cease, and there's still a very real chance he's traded very soon. The price tag, however, might end up being more than the Cubs care to stomach, for a player who would further raise the stakes of this season and thin them out for the years beyond it.

The team might also be a bit reluctant to bring aboard a Scott Boras client heading to free agency, at this particular moment. While Cease won't sign an extension before testing the market anyway, there are some raw feelings within the Cubs organization toward Boras, who they believe leaked details of their offers to Alex Bregman and painted their pursuit of the star third baseman unfavorably on purpose. Boras has not been shy about suggesting (rightfully) that the Ricketts family should spend more money on payroll, but the Cubs believe the super-agent fed certain newsbreakers a biased representation of the team's offer to Bregman and the degree to which their bid was competitive with the one he eventually signed with the Red Sox.

Jed Hoyer is generally very level-headed about such things, and he and Boras have worked around awkward situations in the past. This time, though frustration might simmer between the team and the agent, there's an easy circumvention available: those parties hardly need to talk. It's Preller whom Hoyer will have to woo, if he wants to land one of the leading strikeout starters in the bigs before the season gets underway in full. Whether he'll want to, once he gets a final sense of the price to do so, is still an open question.

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[Bertz]

I know he got traded in late ST just last year and went on to have a wonderful year, but I'd be somewhat worried about not getting the best out of Cease given the timing and circumstances around a move right now.  

On top of that, part of the reason for acquiring another starter is the slew of injuries Brown/Wicks/Horton had last year.  But currently all three guys are healthy, and aside from one disastrous inning in Japan both Brown and Wicks have looked great all spring. 

Now I'm under no illusion either guy will outperform Cease, but at this moment I'd probably roll with them and evaluate rental starters in July.  Especially since Brown and Horton are probably on an innings cap and even in wildly optimistic scenarios need to slide into the bullpen later in the summer.

[Rcal10]

25 minutes ago, Bertz said:

I know he got traded in late ST just last year and went on to have a wonderful year, but I'd be somewhat worried about not getting the best out of Cease given the timing and circumstances around a move right now.  

On top of that, part of the reason for acquiring another starter is the slew of injuries Brown/Wicks/Horton had last year.  But currently all three guys are healthy, and aside from one disastrous inning in Japan both Brown and Wicks have looked great all spring. 

Now I'm under no illusion either guy will outperform Cease, but at this moment I'd probably roll with them and evaluate rental starters in July.  Especially since Brown and Horton are probably on an innings cap and even in wildly optimistic scenarios need to slide into the bullpen later in the summer.

I don’t really worry about getting the best out of Cease. He has pitched all spring. Players get traded mid year and pitch well for the team they get traded to. I don’t think being traded right before the start of the season should hurt his production.  But I do agree with you about not being sure it makes sense for the Cubs anyway. That would be another guy on the last year of his deal and it would cost more prospects. So in ‘26 there would be a real possibility if not having Tucker and/or Cease as well as being several prospects down.