Five Stars of the Cubs Farm, 6/7/23: The First Time Cade K’d 10

Last night was the first one of the season where I watched 20+ innings of minor league baseball and 0.0 innings of Major League Baseball. With the way things are trending, I don’t think it will be the final night of 2023 that I practice that form of self-care.

Here are a bunch of thoughts about what I saw from the system yesterday …

Honorable Mention: The first Low-A pitch Jefferson Rojas was thrown was a 83 mph sweepy slider from a low-slot righty with second-round pedigree, and the 18-year-old turned and roped it into the left field corner. Two at-bats later, against a reliever, Rojas turned around 95 mph into the left-center gap, for a multi-extra-base-hit effort in his first game with Myrtle Beach.

The box score will also show an error, but that was a tricky ricochet off the pitcher’s glove that doesn’t tell us much. It was a night worthy of celebration for a really fast-rising prospect.

I zoomed through the D.J. Herz and Luis Rujano outings, mostly because they came on broadcasts with velocity readings, and I thought would offer me a good opportunity to update the velo arsenal of each player. Rujano was 92-95 with the fastball, fringy changeup in the mid 80s, solid sweeper in the 78-82 range, and I’m pretty sure a curveball in the mid 70s. Could probably handle a starter’s workload with his pitch mix and body type, but the more important work for him is behind the scenes, building some muscle, cleaning up mechanics, and improving the third pitch.

Herz was 90-93 with the fastball and about 83-85 with the changeup. You’d like that difference to be sitting in the 10 mph range, but Herz creates enough life on the fastball and enough sink on the changeup to live with a smaller spread. Threw some really good sliders in the 81-83 range, and still has the high 70s curveball. Things are trending towards a late-season relief assignment — like Ryan Jensen, Luke Little and Daniel Palencia before him — but it was good to see him in his best groove of the season yesterday.

FIVE: PCA, MCGEARY, MORA, STEVENS

Mora with the leadoff home run, Stevens continuing to push for promotion, and McGeary starting to get comfortable in Double-A and heat up again.

But it all pales in comparison to Pete Crow-Armstrong hitting his eighth home run of the season and fourth in his last seven games. Beautiful swing last night, getting the arms extended and sending off the baseball like he was hitting a flier lie with a low-iron. Last 16 games for the top prospect: .281/.378/.547. Not a guy whose prospect profile should be dropping.

FOUR: NICK MADRIGAL AND JARED YOUNG

If you’re counting at home, Madrigal has now reached base at least twice in all nine games he’s started with Iowa. He has two-or-more hits in seven of them, and three hits in three of them. Just seems better than the Triple-A level, leaving him wide open for that “Quad-A” label. As the 2023 MLB season goes further and further off the rails, I’m fine with the idea of bringing Madrigal back and trying him for 100 straight PA at third base. Because, whatever, you know?

THREE: MICHAEL ARIAS

I watched this outing determined to answer “so why isn’t this guy a top 30 Cubs prospect” and I’m struggling a bit to come up with an answer. He probably threw more good sliders than I’ve seen in an outing this year, and the changeup gets a plus grade for me on each watch. He popped one 98 and plenty in the 96-97 range. You might point out that he the floor of his fastball velocity is too low (lots of 93s), and more importantly, that his front shoulder flies open mechanically a lot, leading to a lot of “yanked” pitches. The reliever risk is very high, there’s no question about it. But the best quartile of his pitches are firmly Major League caliber, and there’s just not 15 other prospects in the system that can say that.

TWO: MOISES BALLESTEROS

You have to love the home runs that start with the “off the end of the bat” call by the opposing announcer, and Ballesteros’ home run to the opposite field gap last night did that. He’d add an inside-out double down the left field line later, and almost added a second homer with a fly out to the deepest part of the yard. Ballesteros is swinging hard with fantastic swing decisions. I think the question is whether or not to introduce him to more power-hitting concepts or just let the plus hit tool lead the show without much interference.

ONE: CADE HORTON

First, the line from the night: 5 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 10 K.

Next, the line from the last three outings: 13 IP, 9 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 27 K.

Let’s add some video to the recap:

Now, in honor of his career-high strikeout total, let’s run through 10 quick facts I gleaned from charting the outing…

1. Watch the first 23 seconds of that Pipeline tweet above, his first four strikeout pitches, and you’ll see the four pitches of Horton’s arsenal. I could only catch 68 of Horton’s 69 pitches on video last night, but here’s how the usage broke down: 55.9% fastballs, 25% sliders, 13.2% curveballs, 5.9% changeups.
2. Still, I’ll bet a story internally will how solid those four changeups Horton threw were. Three whiffs and then a well-placed one in the dirt for a ball.
3. Fastball velocity was 94-97 on the South Bend gun. There was one pitch that in my notes I wrote down as “cutter or fastball?” before hearing from the SB broadcast team that the pitch was 98 mph. Upper 90s with relative cut? Nasty.
4. Finished with an absurd 57.1 whiff rate, with 20 swings and misses against 35 swings off 69 total pitches. Pretty much the top starting pitching prospect in baseball at generating a swing and miss in 2023. Even crazier, against the first six batters he faced, Horton had 11 whiffs against 14 swings 78.6%).
5. I definitely saw more separation between slider and curveball in this one, as I’d bet the slider in this outing had more horizontal movement than his season average number. For what it’s worth, the only lofted ball against Horton came off a hanging middle-away slider against fellow first rounder Daniel Susac. He hit an opposite field double off the bottom of the right field fence.
6. The Lugnuts other first rounder, Max Muncy (no, not THAT one), was overwhelmed by Horton. Catcher Ethan Hearn called for Horton to throw eight inside fastballs in 12 total pitches against Muncy, and they generated three whiffs.
7. My consistent nitpick on Horton this year has been too many middle-third fastballs, but that wasn’t the case last night. It even seemed that Horton was determined to miss further from the zone than more to the heart of it, losing plenty of balls way up or way arm side. But his overall feel was good, and Hearn was smart to usually call for a slider to bring Horton back mechanically. Overall, I marked just five middle-third fastballs for the whole outing.
8. First time surpassing 12 outs as a professional, and you have to appreciate the efficiency involved in a double-digit strikeout game: 4.06 pitches per plate appearance. Could have handled the sixth, too, I reckon.
9. This was just Horton’s 20th start since he graduated high school. How crazy is that considering he’s two months from his 22nd birthday?
10. Only 9 first pitch strikes against the 17 batters he faced, but you know what, I don’t think that stat is as important for a pitcher with Horton’s control as it is for others. It’s far safer for a guy like Horton to utilize waste pitches and even fall down in the count, because his aggressive at-you pitching style and simple mechanics lend confidence that he’ll be throwing a strike with an impressive offering on the next one.

Easily the best outing I’ve evaluated from Horton as a Cub. He’s the real deal.