We'll See

Right now, Clare has her hands full with a five-month old who spends just about all his waking moments mastering the skill of crawling and practicing to become the next Pavarotti. There’s not that much a difference between a Leo and a Luciano. So, I was impressed my daughter found the time to forward a story to me about White Sox pitcher Dylan Cease, who changed agents. From now on, Scott Boras will be making comparisons between his new client and Cy Young up to and including the suggestion MLB consider a name change for its pitching award. We’ll see. If the Sox are a franchise with a rich history of pitching (Buehrle, Faber, Lyons, Pierce, Walsh), they also include a long line of pitchers who, for one reason or another, never panned out. Start with Monty Stratton, move on to Bruce Howard and then, for brevity’s sake, jump to the more recent past. Consider James Baldwin; Jason Beret; Gavin Floyd; Greg Hibbard ; Jim Parque; and Mike Sirotka. Each one of those starters had at least one season where they matched the numbers the 25-year old Cease put up last season, 13-7 with a 3.91 ERA. When Jon Garland—now, that was a guy who made me pull at my hair with his “What, me worry?” attitude—was 25, he posted an 18-10 record with a 3.50 ERA. Garland won 64 games by his age-25 season. Compare that to Cease, who has won all of 22 games in his career. I’d rather overpay, and a lot, for pitching over three years than try to satisfy the demands of Cease and Boras. We’ll see.