Jason Ross

I'd guess a Jordan WIcks for Luke Little swap incoming.

I think there's a bit of a balance that the Cubs need to go through. On one hand, you want to ensure that Horton isn't wasting needless innings in Triple-A, while at the same time, you don't want to promote him to say you promoted him. Ultimately, I believe the Cubs will go down one of two paths: 1. There is another injury in the rotation. Be it to Brown, Taillon...someone, which necessitates another addition. Wicks may or may not replace Rea on his own, but I think Horton would be pressed into service. The earlier this happens, the less likely Horton is to finish the year in the rotation, however. 2. Horton builds innings in Iowa, and then joins the bullpen for the season. We have seen successful BP to SP transitions in the past (Spencer Strider is a good example, and actually a decent parallel to Horton, IMO) and the Cubs probably need help there still. Yesterday was a good example that the Cubs BP still feels...short. Palencia, Little and Roberts are potential sore spots. Horton could stay on "high alert" for an injury over the next two months and log 50 or so innings, and then be capable of still eating 70 innings in Chicago out of the BP. A few piggy backs and starts mixed in, but he could eventually be apart of a Horton-Hodge-Pressley "shorten the game" tandem come September/October. This probably allows the Cubs the most consistent action to Horton, even if it means more BP time. You can still get around 120 innings from him this way, and he'll still be ready for a rotational spot next year. There has to be a balance of what's best for the Cubs and what's best for Horton and his development. As much as I want to win, I want Cade Horton to be a useful part of the rotation for more than just 2025. Right now, he's not there yet. He really is gassing around 50 pitches. He needs more stamina and his consistency aint there yet. All three of his walks yesterday were in part of him unable to get the final whiff - a few foul balls that could have been commanded that much better were the difference between K's and walks. And they added a few pitches each PA. I think earliest we'd see him is May.

Absolutely. I'd like to see Cade flash a third pitch a little more often than he has - yesterday he went almost exclusively fastball-slider through four innings. He did get one of his five whiffs on a curveball in the 5th inning - nice pitch. The Cubs have had success with two-pitch guys (Steele and Brown) so it's not an impossibility, I'd just like to have something else if need be.

I guess I would ask this: 1. What was a reasonable outcome for 2021? 2. What was a reasonable outcome for 2022? If we want to say "it's unreasonable for the Chicago Cubs to have to tear everything to the ground a second time in a decade" I would agree with that. However, that is almost assuredly a Tom Ricketts complaint, and not one that should be held against Jed Hoyer. I do not believe it was reasonable to hold Hoyer to a standard of putting together a playoff team with the limitations placed upon him in 2021, and subsequently, that he was unable to immediately replace Darvish, Baez, Byrant, Rizzo, Schwarber, etc within just a few months. I'm more willing to discuss beyond that but I really think those two years, any reasonable expectation that the Cubs were any better than the Brewers is an unfair bar to clear.

Yeah, I do think that's probably fair to a degree. With that said, I'm not sure it's entirely fair, either. Jed came into a situation in which Ricketts really cut budget post-pandemic, a team that was obviously tearing it down. They traded their best SP for a quartet of teenagers, didn't make a single financial commitment to any of their one-year-remaining players, non-tendered Schwarber...the team was always going to be kind of bad for a few years. There's probably enough to quibble over 2023 and whether or no the team has put forth the full-fledged winning mentality, but I do think we lose a little bit of context on Hoyer in what he came into on that aspect. You won't win top-5 votes that way, but it's probably not really his fault for not getting past Milwaukee in 2021 and 2022, either.

Last season was a disappointing setback for the Cubs' top pitching prospect. He got right to the doorstep of the majors—then his stuff went sideways, and he got hurt. This year, though, the arrows are pointing in the right direction again. Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images The best version of Cade Horton is a bully. I don't mean to suggest that he stuffs opposing second basemen into lockers, steals center fielders' lunch money or sends mean messages to catchers on social media. No, the best version of Cade Horton bullies hitters with dominating stuff inside the strike zone, and then forces hitters to chase him outside of it. This has been pretty evident dating back to his dominating performances in the College World Series with Oklahoma, when he vaulted up draft boards. It's why I've found myself making Horton must-see TV. The best way I can explain it is, while some pitchers try to go around you, when Horton is right, he goes through you. It sounds like one of those baseball idioms, I know, but it's just the best way I can describe it. Horton just doesn't care who's in the box; he's going to bully that man into submission. The first-round pick was perhaps at his best in early 2024, as he struck out 29% of hitters at Double-A Tennessee and walked just two over his first four starts. He was so confident in his fastball and slider that he attacked with impunity, and hitters did nothing to dent that confidence. Things seemed to change for the righty, however, upon getting to Iowa. His velocity declined; the walks increased; and he started to get knocked around when he came into the zone. His fastball shape was poor. Stuff+ agreed. You can see his 2024 Statcast data below (important note: Statcast data is unavailable for Double A, so this shows only his 2024 season in Triple A). His fastball graded out worse than average. The slider was good, but less than stellar, and opposing hitters touched him up. After five starts, Horton would be diagnosed with a shoulder injury, sidelining him for the remainder of the season. There was obvious concern for the future of the pitcher entering the 2025 season. Was the velocity showcased in that brief stint last year the new, less thrilling normal? Was the fastball shape going to stay that poor? Was the injury a sign of bigger, worse things to come? So far in 2025, the answer to all of that seems to be a resounding 'hell no'. Stuff+ loves the fastball and the slider. The velocity has sat around 97 mph (topping out at 98 mph), and he's generally looked like the old bully he had been. He's improved almost everywhere. But there is one caveat: he's not all the way back. Not yet, The one place where Horton has struggled a bit is with walks. Some of these can be explained away. He pitched through a downpour in his first start, and in his second, he battled some chilly weather. But that doesn't excuse everything. There's a bit of rust still on Horton. You can tell every, once and a while, he loses his control just a little bit. A week ago, it was to the first two hitters; he walked them on nine pitches. In his most recent start, Wednesday against St. Paul, he walked back-to-back hitters in the third. None of the pitches were horrible; he's just missing by an inch or two. However, those miscues are enough to make you realize that the consistency isn't quite there yet. His stamina, too, is still a work in progress. Around 45-50 pitches, you can tell the steam begins to wear off a bit. On his 52nd pitch of the day, Horton, pitching to Twins prospect Jefferson Morales, let a 1-2 slider get just a bit too much of the plate. Morales punished him by hitting it 385 feet over the fence. On pitch number 61, a 95-mph fastball was piped down the heart. Thankfully for Horton, despite an exit velocity of 96.3 on the swing, the ball safely landed in Owen Caissie's glove in right field. Neither were great pitches, both felt more "get-me-over" than bully-ball. It's not a criticism, so much as a reminder of how much time he missed last year and that rounding into mid-season form will take some time. The good news is that the bully is still in there. After a somewhat spotty fourth, Horton came back for a fifth inning. I'll be honest, I thought he was done after 61 pitches today—so much so that I had written that the 61st pitch of his outing "was his last". Boy, was I wrong. Horton came back out in the fifth and had something to prove, striking out his final two hitters to finish the day with 5 innings, 6 strikeouts, 3 walks and just 1 earned run (and hit), the home run surrendered to Morales. The fastball velocity, by this point, was sitting more in the 94-95 mph range. His velocity isn't holding steady into the 70-pitch range, but that later-game version of Horton can still be absolutely fine—at least against Triple-A competition. The stuff really is there most of the time. On the day, his slider had an average spin rate of 2,651 rpm. To most, that may just feel like a random assortment of numbers, but that's an impressive amount of spin that Horton can place on this pitch, For comparison's sake, his slider's spin compares incredibly favorably to another fastball-slider righty, San Diego Padres ace, Dylan Cease. I don't think Cease is a great comparison to Horton on the whole; the Padres' pitcher tends to work in other pitches a bit more and tends to throw fewer strikes. However, Cease's slider has been a Stuff+ monster, and at least on spin, Horton is right there with him. There's more to pitching than simply RPMs, but considering that it's generally believed that this isn't something you can really improve, the amount of spin he can create is a good thing. After watching pitch-by-pitch Wednesday, I really don't think Horton is far from being MLB-ready. The Stuff+ models think he's great; he's dominating minor-league hitters in most plate appearances; and he easily passes the vibe check with his "I don't care who's in front of me" mentality. I wouldn't say he's fully ready yet, though. He probably needs a few more turns to build stamina (I wouldn't trust him past 70 pitches currently) and consistency. I'd like to see him get back to whiffing a few more hitters (he only had five today; realistically, you'd probably want that to be around two times as much) and not missing by that extra inch or two off the plate. With that said, the Cubs should probably start to feel like they could give Horton a call sometime in May if they need to. Horton might not be all the way back yet, but he probably will be soon. When he eventually makes his way to the North Side, I'd recommend making him must-watch TV. I think he's going to be a lot of fun. What do you think of Cade Horton? Have you gotten a chance to watch him in Iowa this year? 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Good job, Pete.

Both pitches were strikes.

Alright Tuck, you haven't hit a bomb for a while. Now would be a nice time to break that streak.

A few things: 1. The whiffs were kind of low, but I'm not entirely blaming him. I'll explain why in a moment. 2. Here are two of his strikeouts that were of the non-swinging-variety. The Cartaya PA obviously had two pretty wasteful pitches, and both had a pitch a bit too center cut (both were fouled). But the K pitches for both were watched and they were nasty and perfectly placed. So on one hand, each guy probably should have done more on those fastballs, on the back end, each strikeout was well earned. That's kind of the Cade Horton experience - he'll bully your ass with fastballs early and then get you looking later. I'd like to see more whiffs in general, but just on this start itself, I think it's probably a red herring more than anything. What impressed me most was that I thought he was done after 4. He left a slider center cut for a HR and a fastball over the heart for a long fly out to RF and thought "oh, he's gassed". Then he came back out and bullied the last three hitters. It was nice to see.

I followed the game on stream and on Statcast Live. The walks seem like it's less about really bad command and more like he's just missing by an inch or two. Slider was great per his RPM's. I'm really encouraged. I don't think he's ready, yet but I don't think he's far off.

Sadly, part of AZ Phil's report was that Valdez was seen playing other positions than SS. Might just be for versatilities sake, though, so we'll see.

BP wrote a pretty scathing article on the Pirates today. They sucked me in with some Canario stuff, but it was basically "The Pirates are going to Pirate, and it's likely they never do anything to put a real team around Skenes". Well written stuff.

You could tell that there were times that the control wasn't there, always. Three walks usually isn't Shota-esque - it tied his MLB career high and he'd only done it twice prior. But the cool thing with him is that even when he's a little off, he's still a guy you can trust to get you out of big moments. He's just got it.

I would assume a few things: 1. I would guess that there is a bias from Front Office towards perceived budgetary spending. The Marlins are likely viewed as hampered, where as the Cubs are viewed as flush (or should be flush). 2. The lack of Cubs success over Hoyer's tenure. He's been here long enough and without a playoff appearance, it'd be hard to say he's a top-10 guy. If the Cubs can finish around 90 wins, I think they'll start winning votes. But for the Cubs, they'll be more scrutinized for success than the Marlins, who could probably gain votes simply by getting to 82 wins many years.

In my younger years, I was certainly a "night time" person. As I quickly exit my 30's and round third into my 40's, I'm no longer an "anything" person. I almost hope the Eagles are bad to avoid SNF and MNF games. Or hope they blow out their opponent. Tuesdays are rough haha

Man I'm so over these west coasters haha. It's killing me on EST.

Hes pretty terrible, yeah. Clearly we have played Yamamoto, Sasaki, Cease, Gallen and other studs so often that we believe beating up on this guy is beneath us and will thus wait until the Padres challenge our offense properly.

I am more and more convinced Rick Sutcliffe is just a big 13-year-old. If he also believes axe-body-spray is a substitute for not taking a shower for three days, then they'll be one-in-the-same.

Oh I'm sure he does. He's just a bit much for me. It makes me appreciate JD and Ron Coomer. Both seem to have a better sense of when to talk and when to not. Sut comes off on air as feeling the need to fill every moment with noise. In baseball world, Shota really struggled that inning and still went through the teeth of the Padres with the bases loaded. I love him.

Working with Sut has to be the closest thing I deal with on a daily basis with my middle schoolers. I love them dearly, but the amount of nonsensical stories that I'm told, and the amount of times I just want to say "Can you just shut the horsefeathers up now so we can all get to work?" Has to mirror what Boog goes through.

Sutcliffe's MLB Announcer Statcast page has him in the 99% of words used, while being in the bottom 5% for relevant words used. It's astounding.

To be fair to both, this what the MLB officially lists both as: Bregman - 5"11, 190lbs Shaw - 5"10, 185lbs With that said, if your 9 year old can hit, I say put him at 3b. I'm an equal opportunist. With that said, even if he can't, I'm still more interested in that than watching Vidal Brujan hit, so...batter up.