Blue Jays’ Dylan Cease bolsters his Cy Young case with complete-game one-hitter

BOSTON — For the second time in a month, Dylan Cease dared to join Dave Stieb in Blue Jays no-hit history. He allowed his first hit in the sixth inning of Toronto’s 6-0 win over the Boston Red Sox on Saturday, instead settling for a complete-game one-hitter.

Stieb still sits alone in Jays franchise history as the only starter to deliver a no-hitter, but on Saturday, Cease became the first Jay since Shaun Marcum in 2010 to throw a one-hitter. While much has been a struggle for the Jays this year, Cease’s first season in Toronto has been nothing but brilliance. He already earned his first All-Star appearance, started the game for the American League and is now building a compelling case for a Cy Young award.

“Dylan is kind of a throwback pitcher,” manager John Schneider said, “where he’s durable and kind of thrives for that kind of stuff. Yeah, you don’t you don’t see it very much.”

It certainly didn’t look like Cease would go deep in the opening pitches of Saturday’s start. If anything, it wasn’t clear he’d even come back out for the second frame. The righty, after sitting at 97.6 mph on his fastball all year, averaged just 93.7 mph in the first. His body was cranky, Cease said, but loosened up over time.

“People usually start to panic because that is definitely abnormal,” Cease said. “But nothing really hurt. It’s just my body was really not wanting to cooperate, and that’s baseball.”

Eventually, Cease loosened up enough to mow through many Red Sox. He stacked no-hit innings on no-hit innings and entered the sixth without a knock against. Just three weeks after taking a no-hitter into the ninth in San Francisco, Cease appeared destined for another shot. The velocity was rising each inning and his pitch count was low, but Andruw Monasterio clipped an inside pitch for a double down the left-field line for Boston’s first hit.

After the no-hitter ended, Schneider said, Cease claimed he had the energy for around 110 pitches. The Jays manager wanted to give his ace a shot at completing the contest. Cease currently sits third in the American League in ERA (2.46), behind Cam Schlitter (2.07) and Nick Martinez, who was pitching for the Tampa Bay Rays on Saturday. Schlittler has Cease beat in wins, too, but the Jays righty has 10 more strikeouts. It’s shaping up to be quite the AL Cy Young battle in the season’s final months, and games like Saturday may eventually be the difference for Cease.

As the outing ended, with an automated ball-strike review confirming Cease’s last pitch was a strike, the starter threw his hands in the air. It wasn’t the complete game he was celebrating. It wasn’t the one-hitter, either.

“Just that it was over,” Cease said. “I can go rest.”