Evaluating the Cubs after the trade deadline

DENVER — Outside of a small inner circle, no one got to see the full array of options presented to the Cubs at Major League Baseball’s trade deadline. But club officials say rival teams constantly asked about Cade Horton and Matt Shaw, who are already key contributors to a real playoff contender.

The general framework also did not form around a potential one-for-one deal at the July 31 deadline. To acquire an established starting pitcher under multiple years of club control, the Cubs contend they would’ve had to trade a National League Rookie of the Year candidate plus some of their best prospects. That concept was a nonstarter.

Over the next month, the Cubs identified a young pitcher they would trust to start a playoff game in front of 40,000 fans at Wrigley Field, and they did not have to go outside the organization to find him. Horton has been that good since the All-Star break (6-1, 0.86 ERA), drawing high praise for his pure stuff, competitive nature and pitching instincts.

If the offense had not been in such a rut recently, a bigger focus would be on Shaw’s development into a confident major-league hitter (.958 second-half OPS), a learning process that is happening at a speed resembling Pete Crow-Armstrong’s rookie year.

After getting swept out of San Francisco, the Cubs rebounded with Friday night’s 11-7 victory over the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field. Horton handled a notoriously difficult pitching environment — allowing two runs in five innings — while Chicago’s offense exploded against the worst team in baseball.

At this moment, it’s obvious that subtracting Horton or Shaw would not have made sense.

“It’s my job to keep one eye on the present and one eye on the future,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said. “In the past, the players that everyone was clamoring for us to trade to get better in the moment were Cade Horton and PCA and Matt Shaw and Daniel Palencia and Owen Caissie. All those guys are helping us win right now.

“Young players are sort of the lifeblood of what we’re doing. Young players improve quickly. Young players can outperform expectations. There’s always an instant gratification of a certain deal. To make any of the super impactful deals at the deadline that we were asked to make, it wasn’t going to be one of those guys. It was going to be multiple of those guys that are currently performing for us.”

Although Horton and Shaw appear to be keepers, the Cubs still have not received that much impact from the targeted group of role players they acquired in smaller deadline trades: right-handed reliever Andrew Kittredge, left-handed reliever Taylor Rogers and super utility player Willi Castro.

Chicago’s biggest move, relatively speaking, was to get swingman Michael Soroka from the Washington Nationals, and it almost immediately backfired.

Four days after the trade deadline, Soroka lasted only two innings in his first start as a Cub. The club had tracked his velocity dip with the Nationals, but the internal projection was that a few slight adjustments and elite team defense could unlock another level of performance.

Instead, Soroka went on the injured list with a strained right shoulder, an especially deflating piece of news after all that anticipation for what the Cubs might pull off at the trade deadline.

“It’s a pretty rough start, obviously, to being a Cub,” Soroka said. “It’s not how I planned it out. I’m looking forward to changing some minds and getting out there and being a good decision for this organization.”

The Cubs believe Soroka is on the right track after completing Friday’s bullpen session at Coors Field. The next steps will include throwing live batting practice Tuesday at Wrigley Field and eventually going on a minor-league rehab assignment.

In trying to build up Soroka for a multiple-inning role, Cubs manager Craig Counsell acknowledged: “We’re going to probably go a little faster than we’d normally go here.”

“Everything that we did worked right away,” Soroka said. “We got rid of what we needed to. It feels great. There’s a lot of season left. Hopefully, two whole months left.”

October baseball at Wrigley Field — this year and beyond — is more realistic if the Cubs can keep identifying young talent and continuing their development at the major-league level.

Shaw, a first-round pick in the 2023 draft, did not spend much time in the minors, and he missed a significant chunk of spring training due to an oblique injury. It took time to tinker with his swing mechanics, find his place on the team and figure out how to compete against the best pitchers in the world.

A demotion to Triple-A Iowa earlier this season helped Shaw reset. As Cubs hitting coach Dustin Kelly said, something has clicked: “You see an intensity with him in every single swing that we weren’t really seeing earlier in the year.”

Horton’s presence on the mound is also striking. Given all the injuries the Cubs have experienced in their rotation, it’s hard to imagine where they would be without their 2022 first-round pick.

“It’s important to sometimes put names to the players that people have wanted us to trade,” Hoyer said, “and realize that the currency of the deadline in our sport is prospects. The currency of other sports may be first-round draft picks. Trading four or five first-round draft picks for a player — it has worked. But it’s also sometimes led to organizational demise. It’s important if you want to compete every year to keep one eye on the future.”

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