ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Right-hander Dylan Cease’s last season with the White Sox was, well, something.
Certainly not fun, as Cease told reporters Monday at Wrigley Field.
Not when you’re trudging to the cadence of a death march toward 101 losses.
Not when you’re pitching to an ERA (4.58) more than double that of the previous season (2.20), albeit in an American League-leading 33 starts.
‘‘Last year wasn’t enjoyable, really, in any way,’’ Cease said. ‘‘I just didn’t perform well.’’
And the Sox? Oof.
Expected to contend in manager Pedro Grifol’s first season, everything came apart so fast that general manager Rick Hahn and vice president Ken Williams were unloading salaries by the trade deadline. Hahn and Williams, who listened to offers for Cease but held off, were fired in August, and Chris Getz took over as GM to run chairman Jerry Reinsdorf’s operation.
‘‘We had a good chance to compete, and we just didn’t put it together,’’ Cease said. ‘‘We had a really bad year. It led to the need to kind of redo everything.’’
That involved Getz making it known in November that Cease would be shopped, and Cease handled being on the block with grace and aplomb.
Finally, two weeks before the start of the regular season, Cease was shipped to the sunny skies of San Diego. He will pitch for the Padres on Wednesday against the Cubs at Wrigley Field.
Cease will take a spiffy 2.55 ERA with 48 strikeouts and 14 walks in 42 1/3 innings into that start — the kind of numbers teams who vied for Cease’s services in the trade market expected. Cease was the runner-up for the American League Cy Young Award in 2022, and his stuff hasn’t waned since then.
Meanwhile, the Sox pick up the pieces and rebuild without a talent they weren’t willing to pay. Like everything else, Cease took the 2023 season in stride. A good teammate, he hated the losing but not the Sox.
Now he’s using his considerable talent for a good cause: helping the Padres chase a postseason goal. It beats chasing a goal of trying to avoid 100 defeats.
‘‘It’s nice going into every game and feeling like you have a very good opportunity to win that game,’’ he said. ‘‘We have an abundance of talent here, and we play well in a lot of areas of the game. It’s really exciting to come to the ballpark.
‘‘And with the Sox, I really feel like we had that talent, we just didn’t put it together. It’s been a really great experience going to San Diego so far.’’
He hoped to continue that against the Cubs, who drafted him in the sixth round in 2014 and traded him — as their top pitching prospect at the time — with outfielder Eloy Jimenez to the Sox in 2017 for left-hander Jose Quintana.
Jimenez was thought to be the bigger prize at the time. As it turns out, however, it was Cease, who hasn’t missed a start since he was promoted to the Sox in 2019.
He is 47-37 with a 3.75 ERA in his career and has averaged 10.8 strikeouts per nine innings.
The Sox, meanwhile, are playing even worse than they did last season, when they started 7-21. They took an 8-27 record into their game Tuesday against the Rays.
‘‘We just didn’t play well,’’ Cease said of the 2023 Sox. ‘‘It comes down to: ‘Did you throw the ball? Did you throw strikes? Did you field the ball? Did you control the zone? Did you hit?’ And in a lot of ways we just didn’t do a lot of things well in those areas.”
For Cease, better days appear to be on the horizon.
‘‘I’ve enjoyed my time with San Diego so far,” he said. ‘‘We’re a very competitive team right now, and I’m happy with how I’ve been throwing it. It’s great to be here.’’
