Chicago Cubs president on defense over Cade Horton disaster

The Chicago Cubs will be without 24-year-old emerging ace Cade Horton for the rest of this season and well into the next.

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In a worst case scenario for what was initially thought to be precautionary second-inning removal from a start, the Cubs’ 2022 no. 1 draft pick will have to undergo elbow surgery.

That’s some seriously tough news for a team that was counting on the young right-hander to play a big part in the team’s push for a championship this year. It also doesn’t bode well for hopes that Horton would be a building block for a future Cubs winning environment.

Realistically, this is not exactly an unforeseen situation. Horton has had injury and durability issues since he began pitching in college.

Horton’s surgery, Wiggins’ sore arm

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In 2021, while still a freshman at the University of Oklahoma, Horton had Tommy John surgery, which cost him more than a year of his very early career. When he came back, he was brilliant, striking out 13 over 7.1 innings in the title game of the College World Series.

With just 53.2 college innings under his belt, the Cubs raised some eyebrows by drafting him no. 1 with their overall seventh pick in 2022. And although he rose quickly in the Cubs’ organization, injury and durability remained concerns. In 2024, he was shut down in late May with a right subscapularis shoulder strain.

Last season, necessity brought him up to the majors and he came through in a big way, especially after the All-Star break when he went 8-1 and posted an incredible 1.03 ERA in twelve starts. In that stretch of time, he was, arguably, the best pitcher in all of baseball before being shut down for the season in late September with a fractured rib.

On the heels of this Horton bad news was the recent acknowledgment that the Cubs’ current top pitching prospect and 2023 no. 2 draft pick Jaxon Wiggins is being watched and rested due to having a “sore arm.” The 24-year-old Wiggins is another Cubs prospect acquired with a Tommy John surgery in his recent past.

This has to raise the issue of why the Cubs—and Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, specifically—have targeted recently rebuilt arms to be their top pitching draft picks in back-to-back years.

Jed Hoyer on the defensive

In a recent interview with The Athletic, Hoyer came out sounding pretty defensive when talking about Horton’s injury.

“Guys are throwing 96, 97 (mph) with great stuff,” Hoyer said before Friday game at Wrigley Field. “You have to let them go pitch. When I look back, I don’t have any thoughts or regrets about how we handled him, because we were so conservative. And, obviously, he broke down, so I just think that is the nature of pitching in 2026.

“When I look back on our progression with him, we didn’t pitch him the year when we drafted him. In ’23, we could not have been more conservative with how we threw him. Obviously, he spent a lot of time on the IL in ’24. And then last year, we used him, but certainly we were really careful with his pitch counts. We didn’t push him.

“We were unbelievably conservative with him since we drafted him.”

Okay, yes. But there’s still no answer as to why he targeted arms already dealing with significant wear and tear in the first place, especially knowing that a long road to the majors awaited them.

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