One of These Padres Aces Will Be Traded This Winter. Which Should Cubs Pursue?

Most Cubs fans are acutely aware of the twists and turns of Dylan Cease's career. The former Cubs farmhand went to the White Sox organization in the José Quintana trade in 2017, and his successes and failures have been newsworthy on both sides of town ever since. In March, the White Sox dealt Cease to San Diego, where he enjoyed a fourth straight season with at least 32 starts and a third striaght with at least 177 innings pitched, leading the Padres to the NLDS.

Cease has emerged as one of the league's best workhorses, even if that term feels oddly applied to someone who has never reached 200 innings pitched in a season. Even as he established himself in his new home, though, he was threatened for the status of staff ace by fellow trade acquisition Michael King. After coming over as part of the return for Juan Soto, King pitched 174 innings with a 2.95 ERA, striking out nearly 28% of opposing batters along the way.

That Cease and King were so good is great news for the Padres and their fans. Alas, it's unlikely that both are back with the team in 2025. Even after Joe Musgrove underwent Tommy John surgery this month (deepening their need for rotation help next season), A.J. Preller will shop one of Cease and King, while trying to extend the other. Both players are headed into their final season of arbitration eligibility and will be free agents at the end of next season, barring an extension, and with the Padres still trying to adjust to shifting economic realities both within and around the team, neither extending both nor letting them walk via free agency is a palatable option.

For the Cubs, either Cease or King would slot in atop their rotation. While Cease has sketchy control at times, he made some material improvements in his first year outside the talent drain that is the White Sox organization. King's deep pitch mix—four-seamer and sinker; slider and sweeper; changeup—is nasty. Each is a good bet to make 30 starts or more and soak up innings each time it's their turn. The indispensable arbitration salary projections at MLB Trade Rumors pegs Cease for a salary of $13.7 million in his walk year, while King is expected to get $7.9 million.

Stylistically, each pitcher operates at an extreme. Cease is an overhand thrower for whom everything works vertically and toward the glove side. His fastball has unexpected cut and ride, based on his arm angle, because of the way his delivery works.

When the Padres got ahold of Cease, they worked with him to deepen his arsenal, not by forcing him to work anything to the arm side, but by adding a sweeper to his fastball-slider-curve mix. He now has three distinct breaking ball shapes, and his sweeper is one of the weirdest pitches in baseball for an opposing hitter.

Almost without exception, sweepers have less downward movement than this, but also sweep more to the arm side than this. It's something close to a typical pitcher's power curveball. Because of Cease's high arm slot and the purely vertical orientation of his movement on the other three pitches, though, the sweeper really seems to change lanes, even though it hardly does so. This was a neat way to unlock Cease further, and figures to be an innovation to which he holds on even if his stay in San Diego is short.

King, too, made a significant change to his pitch mix upon coming to San Diego. Whereas Cease works so much up and down, King has always been more of a true three-quarter thrower and east-west worker. His four-seamer doesn't have unexpected carry at all, though it does stay out of the dead zone by cutting in a way the hitter doesn't anticipate. His sinker, by contrast, is a very heavy pitch that also has more run to the arm side than one would guess.

The lack of raw vertical hop on King's fastball might tempt you to doubt its utility, but because he pounds the top of the zone—over 53% of his heaters were in the upper third or above this year—from a fairly low release point, it plays up. His key tweak, coming over from the sweeper-crazed Yankees, was the addition of a bullet-spin, tighter and much firmer slider.

Of these two, King is the much better fit for what the Cubs like in pitchers. His release point, movement patterns, and approach are more in like with the way they do things. Since he's also so much cheaper, he would seem to be the natural choice.

On the other hand, though, and just as importantly: Clearing the expected payroll associated with Cease would do much more to give the Padres flexibility, which would make the Padres more eager to part with him. It would cost much more to acquire King, for a pitcher who is only likely to be a little bit better. Meanwhile, Cease would be a more jarring change of pace for opponents (relative to other Cubs starters) than would King. Since he throws the way he does and has had to slowly build out a breaking ball-laden arsenal that suits his mechanics, he might also be able to help Ben Brown reach his full potential, if Brown can stay healthy.

Because King would be more expensive to acquire, the Cubs should only do that if they think they can get a reasonable extension done with him, circumventing the free-agent market to leverage control over a late-blooming starter and sign a deal akin to the one the Dodgers gave to Tyler Glasnow as part of their trade for him last winter. If that's not an option, they should deal for Cease, instead.

Who might be involved in such a deal? There's no need to get overly specific, since the Cubs have a deep farm system and there are many ways to skin a cat. It's worth noting, though, that Javier Assad won't even be arbitration-eligible this winter. With four years of team control left, could he anchor a trade package for one of the San Diego aces? He'd be a good candidate for the kind of developmental work the Padres love to do, but there's obviously a lower ceiling on him than on guys like Cease and King.

As we kept noting, the Cubs have a lot of paths to the major improvements they need to make this winter. This is just one of those possible avenues, but since it would be a way to leverage their financial edge over a smaller-market (though still big-spending) team and get a better deal than they might find in free agency, it's worth serious consideration. Cease or King could both be frontline starters for this team, with transformative impact—especially if acquiring them were paired with the addition of a lower-wattage but steady veteran, like Tomoyuki Sugano. Depth is good, and depth as a complement to excellence is even better.