Why Dylan Cease ‘grateful’ for Cubs, at ‘home’ with Sox originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
The best pitcher in Chicago, maybe the best pitcher in the American League, took a well-deserved day off from the White Sox rotation to enjoy the bone-chilling cold, wind and rain from the visitors dugout at Wrigley Field on Tuesday night.
It was the most comfortable seat in the house as far as Dylan Cease was concerned, the right place at the right time, on the right side of the ballpark, if not the right side of history for a baseball career.
“The White Sox feel way more like my home and my career than the Cubs, really,” Cease said during a conversation with NBC Sports Chicago ahead of Monday’s dominant start Monday to beat Mike Trout and the Angels.
Cease, 26, is fast becoming the jewel of that widely criticized/heralded 2017 trade that sent Jose Quintana to the Cubs for prospects Eloy Jimenez and Cease — more than Jimenez and, at least in easy, lazy hindsight, certainly Quintana.
He won’t pitch in this two-game mini-series this week at Wrigley Field. And he won’t miss it — even if he occasionally thinks about what might have been if the Cubs had projected this kind of starter upside in him and kept him as part of their long-term plans.
“I understood why they did it. I don’t really hold any grudges,” said Cease, a first-round talent in the 2014 draft, who felt to the Cubs in the sixth round — five round after the Cubs picked Kyle Schwarber — because of an elbow injury his senior year.
“I was grateful that they rehabbed me and got me back to playing,” said Cease, who got close to first-round money ($1.5 million bonus) to sign with the Cubs then underwent Tommy John surgery. “It’s one of those things where I’m more grateful for what they did for me than upset at anything.”
Upset? Cease already has been on two playoff teams for the White Sox — just as the Cubs began another roster teardown and began imagining their “next great Cubs…