Ugh: Cade Horton Will Undergo Season-Ending Elbow Surgery

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Andrew Dolph / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The news is bad. The news, by now, is barely news, but that doesn't make it any less bad. Four days after Cade Horton left his start against the Guardians in the second inning, the team announced that he will undergo season-ending elbow surgery. He flew to Dallas to consult with Dr. Keith Meister, who recommended the procedure. Whether the operation will be the modified version of Tommy John that involves placing an artificial internal brace or a full-fledged Tommy John isn't immediately clear, and doesn't need to be decided until the time of the procedure. Either way, though, Horton will pitch again no sooner than June of 2027.

It's a devastating blow for the Cubs, who had penciled Horton in as one of their top two starters for this season. It's also a major setback for Horton himself. A second Tommy John surgery is not terribly uncommong in the modern game, and pitchers return to at least their previous level even after a second operation about two-thirds of the time. In fact, the Cubs were set to face Rays right-hander Drew Rasmussen Tuesday night, before he left the team to be at the birth of his daughter. Rasmussen has undergone three major elbow procedures—two Tommy Johns and an internal brace variant. Jameson Taillon has had the surgery twice. So has Justin Steele, whom the team hopes to see return to the mound by the early part of June. Needing the operation twice in as short a span as Horton has, though, is especially worrisome. He had Tommy John in college at Oklahoma. He also suffered a significant shoulder injury in 2024 and lost the end of last season to a ribcage injury.

It's possible that Horton will simply never be able to withstand a full season's workload in a big-league rotation. At the very least, the Cubs will have to wait until 2028 to try to get him there. The setback is huge, not least because the Cubs have few similarly intriguing pitching prospects on whom to next pin their hopes. Instead, they'll have to hope they have better luck avoiding the injury bug the rest of the way, with one of their best options crossed off before Tax Day.

Until two years ago, the Cubs believed they had an edge on the rest of the league when it came to averting Tommy John. If that had been true, it would have been a valuable advantage, to be sure. Instead, though, it seems that they enjoyed only the watery protection of having a bunch of pitchers selected for durability and without ligament-vaporizing velocity. Now, they've been dealt a series of big blows, from the depths of the farm system (teenage prospect Nazier Mule) to the most important arms on the parent club (Steele, Horton, Adbert Alzolay), in a sobering lesson: The Sword of Jobe eventually falls on a large and growing share of big-league pitchers. Horton is the latest victim, but he won't be the last. The Cubs will have to start acquiring and developing more pitchers of a caliber near his, to position themselves better to weather the inevitable losses. For now, they'll hope the return of Steele and the depth they'd stored up for this season (Colin Rea, Javier Assad and Ben Brown, plus (perhaps, eventually) prospect Jaxon Wiggins) can keep them afloat without their ace.

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[Arlen]

The arts and sciences of pitching have outdone their bodies. It's as simple as that. And it's time to bring out the Mike Marshall instruction set, for researching what to do about it.