Cubs offense lifeless against former White Sox pitcher Dylan Cease in 3-0 loss to Padres

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Cubs hitter Michael Bush wobbled in the batter’s box, a big swing on a back-foot slider throwing him off balance. Then Padres right-hander Dylan Cease came at him with a pitch up and outside. Busch stopped his swing early, but the slider ducked into the strike zone for a called strike three.

In the Cubs’ 3-0 loss to the Padres, that’s how Cease’s outing ended. And Busch wasn’t his only strikeout victim – not by a long shot. The Cubs offense looked lifeless against Cease, striking out 12 times as he hurled seven shutout innings.

“Cease was really good,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “When you're seeing 99 [mph]s in the seventh inning, you know that’s a pitcher that was feeling good. And the slider was really, really good today.”

Cease was drafted by the Cubs in 2014 and traded to the South Side three years later as part of the trade package for left-hander José Quintana. Cease spent the first five seasons of his major-league career with the White Sox, who traded him to the Padres in mid-March.

“It's always good to come back,” Cease said this week. “Obviously I don't have quite as much history with the Cubs, but I enjoy Wrigley, I enjoy Chicago.”

Cease’s start Wednesday extended the strong beginning to his Padres tenure, exactly the kind of rebound from a disappointing 2023 season that the team bet on when they acquired him. In eight starts, he’s posted a 2.19 ERA.

“I think it's just a continuation of, really, a process I started last year,” Cease said. “It just took me a full year to figure out what works for me. I think that's just baseball. We're not robots out there. So sometimes mechanical cues and feels and different things can take some time.”

He said the mechanical adjustment that made it all click was figuring out how to avoid opening up in his delivery.

“For me anyways, the most difficult thing for pitching is staying closed because it is such a rotational movement,” Cease said. “So just finding the right rhythm. With pitching, if you're off just a little, the ball goes this way, or that way, or cuts – it's really a subtle thing that you have to consistently be where you need to be to make the ball do what you want it to do and make it go where it needs to go.”

On Wednesday, only Cubs catcher Yan Gomes managed a hit off Cease. His chopped comebacker in the third inning deflected off Cease’s glove to give Gomes enough time to make it to first base.

Only three other batters reached base, on a hit by pitch and two walks.

Even though Cease threw a career-high tying 113 pitches, the velocity on his fastball ticked up a little, 0.6 mph above his season average. And his sliders combined for 23 whiffs and called strikes, according to Statcast.

“As the lefty, the [slider] that’s away from you backs up and plays more like a changeup, and the one that’s down and in really goes,” said Ian Happ, who struck out twice and drew a walk. “So his two shapes of sliders played really well off the fastball that he does a really good job keeping up in the zone.”

The Cubs offense, despite scoring 11 runs combined in their last two games against the Brewers this weekend, has been inconsistent in recent weeks.

“We've done a good job of scoring what we need to but haven't put up a bunch of big numbers,” Happ said. “So, the pitching staff’s been great. They’ve been holding us together, and offensive will come around. We're going to make some noise like we did earlier in the year, and that's just a matter of time.”