Cubs Prospect Cade Horton Shut Down With Subscapularis Strain

Cubs pitching prospect Cade Horton has a moderate subscapularis strain, reports Meghan Montemurro of the Chicago Tribune on X. The righty will be shut down for three to four weeks and then will have to build back up at that point.

Horton, 22, is one of the best pitching prospects in the sport and may have been trending towards a major league debut this summer, but the odds of that have clearly been reduced by this injury. Selected seventh overall in the 2022 draft, Horton tore through three levels of the minors last year. He tossed 88 1/3 innings between Single-A, High-A and Double-A with a 2.65 earned run average. He struck out 33.5% of batters faced in the process while limiting walks to a 7.7% clip.

Based on that strong professional debut, he was a consensus top 50 prospect coming into 2024. Baseball America gave him the #25 slot, FanGraphs put him at #18 and ESPN at #30, while Keith Law of The Athletic had him at #49.

Here in 2024, he went back to Double-A but carved up opponents in four starts. He tossed 16 1/3 innings in those, only allowing two earned runs. He struck out 18 batters and gave out just two walks.

He was then promoted to Triple-A in May while the major league rotation was dealing with a few issues. Justin Steele, Jordan Wicks and Kyle Hendricks were all on the injured list at that time, with Hendricks also struggling badly prior to his IL stint.

With Horton charging into Triple-A and the major league rotation treading water, the stars seemed to be aligning for him to be pitching at Wrigley in short order. But his first five Triple-A starts didn’t go well, with 15 earned runs allowed in 18 innings. It’s possible that the injury started to creep on him and impacted his results, as his 13.6% walk rate demonstrated an uncharacteristic lack of control.

Regardless of when the injury started bugging him, the poor Triple-A results and this shutdown will obviously erase any momentum towards a major league debut for the time being. Since he’s going to be shut down for most of June, he’ll likely need the majority of July to build back up. That aligns roughly with the July 30 trade deadline, which will be an interesting situation to monitor for Cubs fans.

The club performed well in April but struggled in May, currently sitting on a 30-31 record. That’s good enough to hold the final Wild Card spot in the National League at the moment but there are seven clubs within four games of catching Cubs, making it a fairly tenuous position.

Assuming the club hangs around the postseason picture, they could look for starting pitching reinforcements in the coming weeks, though the rotation is in decent enough shape at the moment. Steele has since returned from the injured list while Ben Brown has stepped up and staked a claim to a rotation spot with a 3.33 ERA on the year. Between those two, Shota Imanaga, Javier Assad and Jameson Taillon, no one in the rotation has an ERA higher than Steele’s 4.10. Wicks is also rehabbing and could be a candidate to rejoin the group in the coming weeks.

Taking all that together, the path for Horton to get to the big leagues is currently much tougher to see than it was just one month ago. Regardless, the Cubs will be hoping to get him back on track in the weeks to come as the need for another starter can pop up at any time. It would also be good to get him some more innings for the long term, as he only has 34 1/3 so far this year with the Cubs undoubtedly hoping for something close to a full starter’s workload next season. He had Tommy John surgery in 2021 and is still working on getting fully stretched out for the long run.