GLENDALE, Ariz. – The original news of Dylan Cease's move to the Padres was delivered by White Sox general manager Chris Getz in the late afternoon of March 13.
Rumors of the deal being close to finalized had leaked out via social media, and Getz wanted to give his one-time ace a heads-up, just as he had made contact throughout the rumor-filled offseason months.
In the process of giving Cease notice of the move, though, Getz also disrupted his nap.
“I think he was just starting to fall asleep and Dylan is the only individual on this planet who probably could fall back asleep. I’m pretty confident that he did,” said a smiling Getz. “I said, ‘I’m going to call you in a couple of hours to let you know it’s either final or it’s not.’
“Plenty of deals through the years don’t get to the finish line for various reasons. So, when I called him back, I asked him if he actually got a nap in and he claims that he didn’t. Part of me thinks that he actually fell asleep.”
Getz’s anecdote was part of a conversation shared this week with MLB.com discussing deeper details of the move sending Cease to San Diego for right-handed pitchers Drew Thorpe, Jairo Iriarte and Steven Wilson and 19-year-old outfielder Samuel Zavala. Getz admitted there were two significant offers in the end “we felt were worth really breaking down, and we talked at length.”
Texas was the second team in play, a baseball source told MLB.com, but the Padres gave the White Sox the offer with the best young pitching. It was a process beginning with pretty close to all 29 teams checking in early on during the offseason, with some clubs showing more sincere interest and others simply doing their due diligence.
“Operating through the offseason, you’ve got free agency, different kinds of ways to plug needs on a club,” Getz said. “So, it dictated very much an ebb and flow of conversations. Sometimes it felt like it was really heating up and then it would quiet down.
“Now, to actually pull the trigger on a deal, we felt like 'OK, we need to bring in players we feel can have a positive effect on our Major League club but also build up our farm system and help us build towards the future.' We applied that type of thinking with any move that we’ve made, whether it be on the trade or even on the free agent front.”
Winter Meetings talks concerning Cease in Nashville were characterized by Getz as general conversations, and nothing where he felt a deal was getting done. Cease finished second in the 2022 American League Cy Young voting, and followed up that effort by striking out 214 over 177 innings in ‘23 while setting a career-high with 33 starts but also featuring a 4.58 ERA. So, Getz felt as if teams needed to see Cease pitch during Spring Training before adding certain players to the trade.
Cease regularly topped out at 97-98 mph with his fastball in Arizona and struck out eight over 3 1/3 innings against the Reds the night before he was traded, with trade talks having picked up two days before that start. The right-hander possesses the sort of elite talent and elite clubhouse presence any team, including the White Sox, would love to have.
Yet, there were no extension talks with Cease amidst the trade rumblings.
“We would have loved to have Dylan Cease for longer than two years,” Getz said. “But it wasn’t realistic to be able to keep him in a White Sox uniform.”
When the trade became official, Getz and Cease were able to reminisce a bit about the right-hander’s growth within the system after being acquired from the Cubs as part of the Jose Quintana deal in 2017. The word “relief” was offered up to Getz in regard to finally finalizing the deal, but he quickly refuted such an idea.
“Whether it be myself or others, we put a lot of work into that deal,” Getz said. “I couldn’t feel better about how we handled the process, how collaborative it was. how critical we were. And how we handled it with Dylan and how we handled it with our players.
“Now to say that it was a relief, I don’t think that was the right word. There’s a level of bittersweet because of the impact Dylan has had with this organization. And then there’s the level of excitement about the talent that is coming in. Having this vision of where we want to go and now all the time and energy is going towards building something that is going to be very special.”