When it was unclear what the San Diego Padres planned to accomplish this season, Dylan Cease kept bubbling up in trade rumors.

Naturally, the right-hander’s hometown Atlanta Braves were often mentioned as a potential landing spot.

After all, they needed rotation depth, Alex Anthonopoulos has shown a propensity for pulling off similar deals, and bringing him home just outside of his native Milton, GA all made sense. Obviously, the Padres didn’t deal them — but the latest rumors suggest that his return to Atlanta might not be out of the question yet.

MLB insider Jon Heyman of the New York Post ($) reported that the Padres hope to re-sign one of their two starting pitchers set to hit free agency this offseason, Cease and Michael King. More importantly, though, Heyman also reported that “word is” San Diego is more likely to focus on bringing back King over Cease.

Now, it’s fully reasonable to expect the Padres to keep their options open, especially since, as Heyman also noted, King could aim to return to the East Coast in his own right.

At the same time, if San Diego does indeed prefer King, that opens the door for the Braves to make their move for Cease — a move that could potentially help Anthopoulos win back the fan base.

Latest Dylan Cease rumors put Braves back in the mix for hometown ace

Despite the Braves’ resurgence after a historically bad start for the franchise this season, the criticism of Anthopoulos has still been present and, in many cases, deserved.

Atlanta didn’t make a reasonable effort to retain Max Fried and, for the most part, didn’t appear to do enough to replace him. Meanwhile, the “big” offseason acquisition of Jurickson Profar turned sour quickly with his PED suspension.

Bringing Cease, a player Braves fans were pining to trade for from the first inkling of a notion that was possible, to Atlanta would rectify a lot of that.

It’d replace Fried, albeit a year later, with a pitcher one year younger than Fried was when he hit free agency and lock him up with Spencer Strider and, presumably, Reynaldo Lopez for years to come. That would also help set up a future for after Chris Sale as he enteres his late-30s.

So far with the Padres this season, the numbers for Cease don’t look nearly as good as they did a year ago when he finished fourth in Cy Young voting, posting only a 4.60 ERA and 1.34 WHIP over nine starts.

However, the underlying numbers also say he’s been quite unlucky, posting a 3.23 FIP so far this year and maintaining his beautiful 11.1 strikeouts-per-9 rate.

The big question for Anthopoulos and the Braves, of course, will then become if Atlanta is willing to fork over the money it’ll require to sign Cease if he does leave the Padres in free agency.

That’s a legitimate cause of concern for fans as this organization has not shown much in the way of being inclined to pony up a big paycheck on the open market.

At the same time, the Braves are still in their window of World Series contention and, if they’re not going to make a splashy move that, perhaps, is somewhere in the range of Fried’s eight-year, $218 million deal, this might be the time.

The player, the vibes and the situation all seem to match up just right. And this latest rumor from Heyman makes the dream of fans across the metro Atlanta area start to seem more like a possible reality for the 2026 offseason.