Cubs' Cease delivers another dominant start

Dylan Cease bore down when it mattered most on the way to his second straight stellar outing.
The Cubs' top pitching prospect scattered three hits and a walk and struck out six over five scoreless innings Friday before Class A South Bend dropped a 6-4 decision to Lansing at Four Winds Field.

Cease opened the game by walking Rodrigo Orozco, who promptly stole second. The right-hander got Joshua Palacios to ground out as Orozco took third. Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. loomed as the next two hitters for the Lugnuts. Ranked as the Blue Jays No. 5 and No. 1 prospects, respectively, the pair is first (.395) and seventh (.316) in the Midwest League in batting. Cease struck them both out, Bichette on four pitches and Guerrero Jr. on three.
Gameday box score
MLB.com's No. 64 overall prospect cruised through the next three frames, facing two over the minimum while yielding only a single to Yeltsin Gudino in the third and hitting Edward Olivares in the fourth.
Lansing threatened again with back-to-back singles by Ridge Smith and Gudino to open the fifth, but Cease got Orozco to fly to left between strikeouts of Javier Hernandez and Palacios.

Fresh off tossing four hitless frames on June 25, the 21-year-old has pitched nine scoreless innings while allowing three hits and totaling 11 strikeouts against three walks in his last two appearances. His ERA has fallen from 3.05 to 2.47 over that span, which would place him seventh on the circuit if he had enough innings to qualify.

One of Cease's most notable improvements of late has been command. Since walking 15 batters over his first five starts, he's issued eight free passes in his last seven. His 3.0 BB/9 rate in 23 2/3 frames over the last two months checks in well below the 5.7 rate he produced over the same span in April. The Lugnuts' only walk on Friday was Orozco's to open the game.
Tyler Peyton (2-2) replaced Cease to start the sixth and surrendered six runs -- four earned -- on 11 hits and a walk over the final four frames.
Guerrero ended up with three hits and scored a run for Lansing, while Smith contributed three hits and three RBIs.
Lugnuts starter Andy Ravel (5-2) allowed two runs on eight hits and a walk with one strikeout over seven innings. Geno Encina gave up a hit and a walk in a scoreless ninth to earn his second save.