Cade Horton is Just Getting Silly Now

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images

Watching Cade Horton pitch over the last six weeks has been one of the game's great pleasures. With his compact frame and his almost twitchy, attack-mode mound presence, he evokes memories of Jake Peavy at his best—but, naturally, Horton throws harder. He's armed with everything a contemporary starter needs, but he works like an old-school ace.

When no one is on base, he's not working out of the stretch in the name of efficiency. He takes a wide, even, square stance on the mound, stares daggers at the hitter over his high-held glove, and then works a fast-paced, high-energy motion and cuts the ball loose. He's exceptionally quick in getting back to the rubber, choosing his next pitch and delivering it; he's one of the fastest workers in the big leagues. That changes somewhat with runners on base, as you can see by comparing his splits to those of his highest-volume teammates.

Lately, though, we haven't even had to see much of the slowed-down version of Horton, because batters are rarely becoming runners. Against the team from suburban Atlanta on Wednesday, Horton didn't allow a hit, working five sparkling innings on just 75 pitches before being lifted for workload management reasons. He struck out six, and the only baserunner he allowed came on a 10-pitch walk in the first inning. He was in command all night, as he has been for most of his last several outings.

We continue to see him do new things, too. On Wednesday, his slider—the pitch Statcast labels as a sweeper, but which he never engineered to behave that way and which he throws like a regular slider, in terms of grip and arm action—was a bit slower and bigger-breaking than usual, which meant that his curveball was humming in at the same speed the slider was. He also had good, consistent run on his sinker and his changeup.

Compare that movement array to his start against the Angels in California last month, and you can see how his stuff continues to evolve. He's getting better command of the two pitches that work to his arm side all the time. The breaking stuff has always been great, but learning how his fastball plays in the majors and how to use the sinker and changeup in contrast with his more natural movement profile has unlocked new levels for him seemingly each week over the whole summer.

There will (and probably should) be controversy over Craig Counsell's choice to lift Horton so early in a close game Wednesday, after the bullpen coughed up the 1-0 edge they had and the team lost 5-1. Horton's previous workloads are so small that the Cubs have worked a bit scared with him all year, wary (arguably, more than science and medicine support) of letting him take on a normal amount of work in the starting rotation. When he's on the mound, though, Horton becomes more and more the main character of the 2025 Cubs' story with each appearance.

As much as many have made of the notion that trading for Kyle Tucker put the Cubs all-in for 2025, the organization itself never thought of things that way. They define themselves as a team trying to build a young core for a long winning window, and in Michael Busch, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Matt Shaw, they've found at least three strong pieces of that core over the last two years. Horton makes four, even before one gets to the questions of whether Miguel Amaya or Daniel Palencia can carve out lasting places in that group. Given the price of starting pitching on the open market, he's phenomenally important to the team's medium-term future, which is why they've handled him so carefully thus far. Games like Wednesday's can be a bit frustrating, but they're ultimately encouraging. Come October, Horton will still be in position to have outings like that one, and each one will mean a great deal more to the team (both present and future) than this one did.

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