Article: I Owe Jed Hoyer (and Dan Kantrovitz) an Apology

[Matthew Trueblood]

I'm not good with grand gestures. I just wrote "I'm Sorry!" in gasoline in this parking lot. Will someone please hand me a match?

Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

In July 2022, the Cubs held the seventh overall pick in the MLB Draft. They were on the apron, as it were--the fringe of the area where the elite talents in that particular class ran out. By most people's estimation, there were a fistful of truly worthy top-of-the-first-round choices on the board going into the annual culling: Jackson Holliday, Druw Jones, Termarr Johnson, Elijah Green, Brooks Lee, and Cam Collier. That's only six names. It felt like there was a real risk that the exciting players with the future star potential would be gone before the Cubs got their turn.

Then, a miracle happened. In fact, two of them did. First, the Rangers took Kumar Rocker with the third pick. Rocker, a senior pitcher from Vanderbilt who had been the 10th overall pick the previous year and didn't sign due to issues with his physical exam, was part of a double move by Texas, in which they spent the money they saved on him (relative to the slot value of the third pick) to select Brock Porter--the top high-school hurler in the draft--with their fourth-round pick. It was a clever workaround for the fact that, thanks to having signed Marcus Semien and Corey Seager the previous winter, the Rangers lost their second- and third-round picks, and would therefore have had a hard time getting more than one top-50 talent without a bold stroke. Still, it created an opportunity. 

Holliday, Jones, Johnson, and Green went in the top five, though, so with the Marlins on the clock, it looked like the Cubs would still be settling for the last of the big names, whoever that might be. Instead, Miami reached slightly, taking collegiate outfielder Jacob Berry. That gave the Cubs a wide-open lane. They not only got to choose between Lee and Collier, but could plausibly do a quick check-in with each, to see which they might get at a better value, the better to beef up the rest of their draft class. There's a limit to the ability to do that, and you're usually better off selecting someone in whom your model or your scouts has conviction, but it was a nice position, anyway. The Cubs had caught a break.

As you surely know, they eschewed both options. Instead, they took Cade Horton, who had been a pitching hero for the University of Oklahoma in that year's College World Series, and who was considered one of the better college hurlers available. Horton, however, had not come into the draft nearly as highly rated as Lee or Collier. He had been a third baseman until relatively recently, and was coming off an injury. The track record that usually lets a team establish confidence in a college pitcher (enough, for instance, to take him first overall, as the Pirates did with LSU's Paul Skenes in 2023) wasn't there for Horton, and the Cubs had passed on two high-floor infield prospects to take him.

I hated that pick. Nor was I consoled when they spent their second-round selection on Jackson Ferris, a high-ceiling high-school southpaw whom they were able to sign because of the savings they realized by taking Horton above his expected position and signing him for less than his slot allotment. Every team, in the modern era of the draft with its hard caps on bonus pools for picks in the top 10 rounds, spends pretty much every penny the CBA permits. I wasn't worried about that. I disliked the idea of passing on both Lee and Collier in order to land two pitchers, each of them vulnerable to vagaries (injury, control trouble, the inability to shape a third or fourth pitch) that make them inherently more risky than position players. I didn't write regularly at the time, but there's still ample evidence of my displeasure. Here's just one example, of more than one.

There’s so much uncertainty in the draft that you can’t be mad about this stuff and there’s no valid opinion right after the pick but this pick and the team attached to it are stupid.

— Matthew Trueblood (@MATrueblood) July 17, 2022

This, then, is my mea culpa. I have been proven about as wrong as wrong gets. I think there were sound elements to my thought process at the time--Collier was young for his class, the son of a big-leaguer, and an advanced hitter for a prep infielder; Lee was extraordinarily polished, and more toolsy than most college shortstops; pitchers really are pretty risky, and Horton was unusually unproven for such a high pick at his level and position--but I got it very wrong, and the Cubs' scouting department (under Dan Kantrovitz, with the oversight of Jed Hoyer) got it almost unbelievably right.

Friday night, MLB Pipeline unveiled their Top 100 prospects list, and Horton ranked 26th. That's been more or less his exact position on each of the major global rankings issued so far. Admittedly, Lee is a few spots higher, but Lee also signed for about $1.25 million more than Horton, so the Cubs could not have gotten Ferris if they had taken Lee instead of Horton. That's important, of course, because Ferris was the centerpiece of the trade that brought the Cubs Michael Busch, who's somewhere between 50th and 75th on most of the major lists. 

Besides, it was Collier I really wanted them to take, and he's not even on the newly revealed list. Baseball America just ranked him 10th in the Reds system, alone. Collier still has plenty of time to get into gear, developmentally, but the Cubs are going to realize tangible, big-league benefits from their choice in 2024, which the Reds certainly won't be able to do. If he stays healthy, Horton will pitch in the majors this season. Busch is likely to be the team's Opening Day first baseman. 

Horton and Ferris were a master stroke from Kantrovitz, who took over the Cubs' scouting department just a few months before the world stopped and surely didn't feel like he got to make decisions outside the long shadow of COVID until early 2022. There are still plenty of ways for it to turn south, but a year and a half after a draft is a good time to evaluate it. That's when you have a sense of the validity of the decisions that were made at the time, because they have translated either into big-league value or the expectation thereof, be it by studying much more complete and precise scouting reports or top prospect lists, or because the players involved have actually reached MLB, or because they've been traded for other players. Right now, in a sweet spot for discerning the quality of those choices, the Cubs look incredibly smart.

If things pan out as they now have a right to hope, the Cubs might get the long-term ace of their rotation and a staple of their lineup for half a decade out of the choice to pass on Lee or Collier in favor of Horton and Ferris. No matter how much I believe in the practice of targeting tooled-up college hitters or extra-young, talented high-schoolers, I have to acknowledge that the team's scouting staff (and the player development folks who brought along Horton and Ferris for a year and a half after the selections were made) got this absolutely right. If the Cubs are able to claw their way out of a frustrating period of failure and become the perennial powerhouse they ought to be in the NL Central, we might well look back at the 2022 Draft as the moment that things turned sharply for the better.

How did you feel about taking Horton at the time? Are you a believer in Horton and/or Busch as 2024 difference-makers? Just how big a dope am I? Feel free to answer any of these below. Just keep in mind: I still have all that gas splashed across the concrete.

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[Outshined_One]

It's kind of funny, I had similar reactions to the Cubs drafting Horton and Shaw. I wanted the Cubs to take a big swing, and was initially disappointed and annoyed. But, People Who Know Stuff came out of the woodwork shortly after the pick and said those guys were actually really good picks, so I felt better.

Then, the Cubs took huge swings with their next picks, and I couldn't really complain about either. Here's hoping they get a similar outcome with Wiggins as they did with Ferris.

[CubinNY]

Me too. Call it Hendry shellshock syndrome 

[Jason Ross]

I can gladly admit; I liked Cade Horton a lot draft night. I'll also admit...he's been better than I could have imagined, despite that. 

[Tryptamine]

I absolutely hated the Horton pick the day of the draft. I was fully on team Brooks Lee with Cam Collier being my 2nd choice. The Shaw pick I was pretty OK with. I was kind of interested in Nimmala, but had nowhere near the investment I had in Brooks Lee. 

[Post Count Padder]

3 hours ago, CubinNY said:

Me too. Call it Hendry shellshock syndrome 

Man those Hendry drafts for a few years were brutal. 2005 and 2010 were garbage both at the time and in hindsight.

It's also insane to me that in the 2002 draft, the Cubs had 4 first round picks and 8 picks in the first three rounds and just ONE of those players made the majors (8 mediocre games pitched from Billy Petrick).

[JBears79]

Admittedly i knew nothing about Cade Horton on draft night. What sold me was that CWS performance. You could see the potential. I have extremely high hopes for him in the feature because he looks like a future ace. He's just been so good.

[CubinNY]

This is why I like Horton (Horton quote from The Athletic article on Busch, PCA, and Horton))

“I like things being simple,” Horton said. “The best feedback I’ll get is from a hitter and how they react. There’s all this data, but if it’s not in the strike zone, then it’s not going to play. Guys aren’t going to swing — it doesn’t matter how gross it is. So it’s just going out there and taking it one pitch at a time.”

[Outshined_One]

17 hours ago, Post Count Padder said:

It's also insane to me that in the 2002 draft, the Cubs had 4 first round picks and 8 picks in the first three rounds and just ONE of those players made the majors (8 mediocre games pitched from Billy Petrick).

That draft should be held up as an example of why recovery from TJS is not an automatic. Injuries ravaged that class, not the least of which was Luke Hagerty's (apparently) botched TJS.