How the Cubs put Cade Horton back on the fast track, leading to his debut in New York

Live from New York on Saturday night, Cade Horton is expected to debut as the Cubs’ most-anticipated pitching prospect in a generation. It’s not quite to the level of Mark Prior, the No. 2 pick in the 2001 draft who made it to Wrigley Field less than a year later. But in Horton, the Cubs again, finally, see a homegrown pitcher with a wow factor.

Getting Horton back onto the fast track became a team effort. For all the hype, Horton had a 2024 season to forget. Cubs officials had real questions after seeing an early dip in velocity and a subpar performance during his initial promotion to Triple-A Iowa. A serious injury then wiped out months of much-needed developmental time.

But when a pitching prospect is supremely talented, things can happen fast.

“It’s been crazy,” Horton told reporters before Friday’s game against the Mets at Citi Field. “It’s a testament to all the hard work I put in this offseason, and the strides I’ve made maturing and really knowing it’s my time.”

The first-place Cubs didn’t promote Horton to save their season in May or give a dragging team a jolt of energy. Rather, the buzz is more about what Horton, 23, could eventually become by October for a legitimate playoff contender.

“He’s been pitching fantastic,” Cubs pitching coach Tommy Hottovy said. “For a guy who battled some ups and downs last year, some mechanical stuff and some struggles, he took the offseason and came into spring training ready to work. He’s picked up kind of where we all hoped he would heading into the season. He’s gone down and performed at a high level. We’ve challenged him with some things to continue to get better, and he keeps stepping up in everything we give him.”

That collaborative process began in earnest during spring training in Arizona, where the group of staffers working on the Horton plan included Hottovy, Cubs assistant pitching coach Casey Jacobson, director of pitching Ryan Otero, special assistant Tyler Zombro, pitching coordinator Matt Hinkley and Mike Sonne, the organization’s pitching scientist.

The consensus was that some changes had happened to Horton’s delivery and fastball profile as he tried to push through an injury-plagued season. The program included input on biomechanics, recommendations from the strength and conditioning department, and a general awareness that Horton shouldn’t be rushed.

“Cade’s a good enough athlete to adapt,” Zombro said. “Everybody got together and we had a brain trust on this. We went to Cade with some slight modifications of things we could very slightly tweak to get the velo and shape back to where we wanted.”

In 2023 Horton had cruised through stops at three minor-league affiliates. It was not an exaggeration to call him one of the best pitching prospects in the sport, a notch or two below Paul Skenes. Horton’s draft status (No. 7 pick in 2022) and the industry’s prospect rankings reflected that upside.

That momentum stopped last year with the pain he felt around his right shoulder due to a subscapularis strain. Restarting presented a different challenge. When a pitcher returns from injury, it’s not unusual to see the arm slot move because so much of the throwing is done on flat ground during rehab.

For Horton in particular, that slot had shifted slightly. The Cubs referenced older KinaTrax data that measured variables such as arm angle, spine angle and the timing when the front foot plants. That information added to the different perspectives — medical outlook, high performance, pitching instruction — working toward the same goal.

“Within a week, Cade turned a corner,” Zombro said, “and the data was indicative of his 2023 self. He’s done a great job staying on top of the medical stuff. Hopefully, he feels like he’s in a pretty good spot.”

Horton put himself in position to capitalize on the opportunity when Shota Imanaga recently joined Justin Steele and Javier Assad on the injured list, creating an opening in the major-league rotation. The Cubs are trying to manage the injury risk moving forward, tracking Horton’s activity in the weight room, testing his range of motion, monitoring the arm slot and analyzing the pitch data.

That attention to detail requires a certain level of cohesiveness across the organization. To get buy-in from the player, the Cubs aim to present cross-referenced information from various departments rather than simply telling a pitcher what to do. The club is not putting a hard cap on Horton’s innings this year, either, believing that daily workload data is more predictive than pitch counts or innings totals.

Garrett Crochet, for example, had never started a major-league game before last season. Yet even while pitching for the worst team in baseball history, Crochet accounted for 32 starts, represented the White Sox at the All-Star Game and increased his year-over-year innings from 25 (including 12⅓ in the minors) to 146. The Boston Red Sox saw enough to make a blockbuster trade for Crochet and reward him with a six-year, $170 million contract extension.

Horton is not yet in Crochet’s stratosphere. But it is another way to think about how pitching philosophies have evolved. Some concepts, though, are still timeless. During the monotony of spring training, Horton drew praise for blending into the clubhouse and carrying himself in a professional manner that veteran players respect.

“I like Cade a lot,” Cubs pitcher Jameson Taillon said. “He’s definitely got a lot of traits that you want in top-of-the-rotation starters. He works extremely hard. He’s dedicated to his craft. He’s committed to being really good. In spring training, he made a pretty good impression on a lot of guys, just by showing up early, staying quiet, doing his work. Obviously, his tools speak for themselves. He’s got a big fastball, a great slider. When the time’s right, we’d welcome him with open arms.”

That time is now. While player development should be a continuous process at the major-league level, Cubs officials have also shown that their patience will only go so far this year. Matt Shaw, the Opening Day third baseman, received 68 plate appearances before the club demoted the top prospect to Triple-A in mid-April, demonstrating a sense of urgency.

Ben Brown, a young pitcher with a profile roughly similar to Horton’s, recently got this performance review from Cubs manager Craig Counsell: “We need better.” Brown has shown his manager more in his two starts since those frank comments.

While Steele was once given an extended opportunity to start after the 2021 trade deadline, and eventually blossomed into an All-Star, the Cubs right now can’t afford to give Horton the same latitude.

“He has to earn his spot up here,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said. “He has to continue to develop after the majority of his season last year was lost.”

Horton’s fastball may not be back to the 2023 version, but it cuts and breaks vertically in ways that should play against the world’s best hitters. His ability to supinate allows him to have two plus breaking balls. He still has a changeup and a curveball in his back pocket, though those pitches have not been featured as prominently this season.

As always, the game will tell Horton what he needs to work on next. That wasn’t going to keep happening in Des Moines. Bright lights, big city, it’s time to see what he’s got.

“There are absolutely things he needs to keep improving on,” Counsell said. “Some of those things don’t necessarily show up at Triple-A, but they’ll show up immediately here.

“I’m optimistic, yeah, absolutely. There’s no question, a healthy Cade Horton, he’s going to impact this team.”

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