Breaking News: The Orioles will still have to pay a high price to acquire a spectacular ace because of…..

The latest rumor mill says the White Sox want two top prospects from anybody for Cease.

There are now 77 days remaining until Orioles Opening Day. In uniform number terms, that’s 2022 Terrin Vavra days until baseball returns. He switched to the number 23 for 2023, so it’s not even his most recent number. This time a month from now, we’ll be in the final days before pitchers and catchers report to spring training.

Today, as we have done many times this offseason, we contemplate Dylan Cease. Should the Orioles trade for him? Are they going to? ESPN’s Jesse Rogers, whose reporting mostly comes from a White Sox perspective, wrote yesterday about Cease and how the asking price of new general manager Chris Getz – who was supposedly once offered in a trade for Brian Roberts late in his career – has remained high.

About the Orioles specifically, Rogers writes, “the teams might line up if corner infielder Coby Mayo can make his way into the deal.” Given that this is coming from a Chicago reporter, we can guess from this that that’s who the White Sox want and who the Orioles have yet to give up. There is no guarantee that this is the case, but it’s a rumor that feels like it’s got a bit more substance to it than a lot of the ethereal ones that have come along.

Whether Mayo plus some more lesser guys for Cease is a trade that the Orioles should make is going to depend a whole lot on what Cease is going to be going forward. Every story that mentions Cease makes mention of his Cy Young runner-up season in 2022. That wasn’t too long ago! But also on the other side of the ledger is a 2023 where he finished with a 4.58 ERA and 3.72 FIP.

Did Cease deserve better than those 2023 results? Maybe! The White Sox defense was generally agreed to be not good, and Cease finished the year with a .330 BABIP. That’s high. His runner-up Cy year of 2022 was fueled by a .260 BABIP. That’s low. The Orioles have no need for a mid-4 ERA guy, let alone one they’d have to give up prized prospects to acquire.

On the other hand, if Cease is more of a high-3s ERA guy with the potential to get into the low 3s, that’s worth a trade package that might make people who’ve been intensely focused on the growth of Orioles prospects since

2019 wince more than a little bit. Though the results declined, Cease had nasty stuff in a number of starts, generating more “swords” (a recent Statcast creation based on Pitching Ninja tweets, signifying batters swinging and missing in ugly fashion) than any other pitcher.