Cubs general manager Carter Hawkins admits that he was the “low guy” on right-handed pitcher Cade Horton when the team was preparing for the 2022 MLB Draft.
That wasn’t a knock on Horton himself, or his standout performance in the College World Series. It was more of a question of sample size.
Horton was less than a year and a half removed from Tommy John surgery. He played mostly third base his redshirt freshman year at Oklahoma as he worked back from the injury and had a 7.92 ERA heading into the Big 12 tournament.
From then on, however, through a CWS finals record-setting 13-strikeout appearance, he didn’t allow more than two runs in a start.
The Cubs had to grapple with the question, to paraphrase Hawkins, how much do elite performances in elite competitive environments predict future performance?
“I think that’s a really interesting question that we’ll continue to look at,” Hawkins said during the general managers meetings in Las Vegas earlier this month. “But Cade is an example of someone who had elite performance in an elite competitive environment that continued to perform at an elite level once he got to pro ball, that’s for sure.”
Horton’s emergence this year as not just a strong rotation piece but arguably MLB’s best starting pitcher in the second half of the season (1.03 ERA) was an organizational victory. But the process that brought him into the organization, through the farm system, and to the majors hasn’t produced a boom of young pitching for the Cubs.
Of the Cubs’ top 15 prospects, according to MLB Pipeline, only three are pitchers: No. 3 Jackson Wiggins, No. 9 Brandon Birdsell and No. 13 Kaleb Wing.
While Wiggins got a brief taste of Triple-A at the end of the minor-league season, Birdsell had elbow surgery in September to repair his ulnar collateral ligament with an internal brace, and 18-year-old Wing is at the beginning of his pro-ball journey after being selected in the fourth round of the 2025 draft.
There isn’t another Horton waiting in the wings to immediately help the rotation, which makes it all the more important for the Cubs to be aggressive on the starting pitching market this offseason.
Adding starting pitching has long been on the Cubs’ to-do list. Even after the Cubs signed left-hander Matthew Boyd to a two-year contract last offseason, they were surveying their options to continue to bolster the rotation.
As it played out, the opportunity to improve the team presented itself on the offensive side instead. The Cubs traded for right fielder Kyle Tucker, and they even took a swing (and missed) on Alex Bregman.
By the time the trade deadline rolled around – and after a series of injuries to the starting rotation, including Justin Steeele’s season-ending elbow surgery – the need for frontline starting pitching was even more glaring.
The price, however, was high. So high that the frontline starters with multiple years of control didn’t change hands. And the Cubs’ acquisition of right-hander Michael Soroka, who the Cubs saw more as a swingman even before he hurt his shoulder in his first post-trade start, was the closest they came to adding to the rotation.
Fast forward to this offseason, and the stars are aligned. Not only are the Cubs on the hunt for pitching in all areas, but they see it as the most obvious opportunity for improvement – after some internal offensive strides, another year of development for their position-player prospects, and a high replacement-level bar to clear at most positions.
“I expect to explore trades,” president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said during the GM meetings. “I expect to explore free agency, both at the top of the market, but then also looking at minor-league free agency.”
Those minor-league free agents will help fill out the bullpen, both right out of spring training and throughout the season. But it just wasn’t clear until this week how the starting pitching market would play out in the aftermath of this past trade deadline.
“The trade deadline is a snapshot,” said Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, who led the Cubs’ pitching department before he took the helm in Boston. “My guess is, from having some conversations, some teams are continuing down the path that they started to to chart at the trade deadline. Others will reevaluate and say, based on play in the second half, or based on resources available, based on the emergence of some guys that they didn’t think were going to contribute to the extent that they did, they’re in a different position now. So you kind of have to refresh and recalibrate.”
Breslow reiterated the Reds Sox’ intention to aggressively pursue starting pitching. And on Tuesday, they traded for veteran right-hander Sonny Gray, sending right-hander Richard Fitts and the team’s No. 5 prospect left-hander Brandon Clarke to the Cardinals in the deal.
On Wednesday, the Blue Jays made a statement in free agency, reportedly signing right-hander Dylan Cease to a seven-year contract worth $210 million.
The starting pitching market is churning early.
Your move, Cubs.