Knights pitcher Dylan Cease ‘locks in’ on the present as a top White Sox prospect
As he threw his pitch in the middle of a high school baseball game on a cold day in March 2014, Dylan Cease felt a tingling sensation in his right elbow.
“I could just tell something was wrong” Cease said.
In that moment, his future changed.
Cease, then a senior at Milton High School in Georgia, went from a projected first-rounder in the Major League Baseball draft to uncertainty.
“Everything I had worked for was pretty much gone in that moment,” said Cease, who would later undergo Tommy John surgery to repair a ligament in his pitching elbow.
Five years later, Cease is the No. 3 prospect in the Chicago White Sox organization, No. 18 overall in the minor leagues. He’s 5-2 with a 4.69 ERA and 67 strikeouts in 13 starts with the Charlotte Knights, the White Sox’s Class AAA affiliate.
The former Vanderbilt commit landed with the White Sox in 2017 in the Eloy Jimenez trade with the Chicago Cubs, who picked Cease in the sixth round of the 2014 draft. Jimenez played for the Knights last season and is now with the White Sox.
Meanwhile, White Sox fans and some in Chicago media are waiting for his call-up, but that’s not what he’s focused on.
“All of that noise is just noise,” Cease said. “If I don’t take care of what I need to take care of here, I won’t get the job done so just take it day by day.”
‘Be more conscious’
Dylan and his fraternal twin, Alec, did almost everything together.
It was natural for them. As twins, there was little individuality, Alec said, but that didn’t stop them from being competitive.
“That competitive drive really kind of enhanced our game because if he did something, I wanted to do something even better,” Alec said.
Growing up on a farm in a small, Georgia town, the two were practically inseparable — including on the baseball field. After tearing the labrum in his pitching shoulder, Alec Cease focused on becoming a pilot while Dylan continued to chase his MLB dreams.
Now at 23, the Cease brothers still do things together when Alec travels to see Dylan play. They share a deep interest in meditation that focuses on consciousness and spirituality, something Dylan discovered a couple of years ago while browsing YouTube.
Dylan Cease found an Indian yogi in Tennessee named Sadhguru and wanted more information about him.
“I read all of his books,” Cease said, “and I was like, ‘You know, I’m going to give this a chance. Why not? You got nothing to lose.’”
Cease said the meditations helped him to become a better athlete and person.
“The whole point is to raise your consciousness, become more conscious of yourself,” he said. “Be more conscious of the actions you are taking, the motions and all of that.”
Cease persuaded his brother to give the yogi’s teachings a shot, and now, they hold each other accountable with their daily meditations.
Still curious about the yogi, Cease went to Sadhguru’s place for several days to see if raising consciousness was a real thing. Cease found himself surrounded by people he didn’t know, all sleeping in a big hall together. They practiced different meditations all day, every day, and ate vegetarian food. For him, it was interesting and uncomfortable.
“I consider myself still a beginner with it,” Cease said. “I’m just following the processes, and probably a couple years from now, I’ll be able to tell you more definitively if it’s real.”
‘Everyone talks’
The 6-foot-2, 190-pound Cease blossomed the more he dived into the yogi’s teachings.
He moved from high-A Winston Salem to Class AA Birmingham last year. Now with the Knights (41-35), Cease has found a consistent rhythm — despite a slump this month.
Cease started the season 2-1 with a 3.33 ERA in April and followed that by going 2-1 with a 3.18 ERA in May. However, in June, he’s 1-0 in four starts but has given up 16 earned runs in 16 ⅓ innings with a whopping 8.82 ERA.
Although Cease is a top White Sox prospect, Knights pitching coach Steve McCatty described him as “one of the guys.”
“He doesn’t take the things of being a top prospect to heart,” McCatty said. “He doesn’t really look for special treatment. He just goes about his business, does the things he’s supposed to do.”
McCatty said what makes his pitcher different is the quality and variety of his pitches, as long as he makes the pitch.
“Pitching, if you can’t locate it, it doesn’t really matter how hard you throw,” he said.
Cease, who can throw a fastball in the mid-90s, said what makes this season different is that all of the parts are coming together; however, he’s staying “locked in” on the present rather than listening to the “noise.”
“Everyone talks and they have opinions and they have this and that, but they’re not living and they don’t see the day by day,” Cease said. “Sometimes, you hear stuff and laugh. Live and be the best you can right now.”
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