NEWSLETTER
Last Tuesday, the Cubs promoted their top pitching prospect, Cade Horton, from Double-A Tennessee to Triple-A Iowa for once final test before he reaches Chicago. Horton had made ten starts over two seasons with the Smokies before his promotion, and there’s no other way to describe those results but dominant: 1.25 ERA with 49Ks over 43.1 IP). And since Cade Horton finally made his Triple-A Debut last night, I thought you might want to know how that went!
Cade Horton Triple-A Debut
Cade Horton’s Triple-A Debut wasn’t exactly dominant, but he did strikeout out six batters over 4.0 innings of work, and those Ks are a thing of beauty:
All together, his final line looks a little worse than what I think actually happened. And really, I’m just talking about the walks: 4.0 IP, 2H, 2ER, 4BB, 6K. Let’s go through each inning one-by-one, show I can show you what I mean.
FIRST INNING
Horton walked one batter in the first inning, but that plate appearance actually looks pretty competitive, with Horton hammering (but just missing) the top of the strikezone with fastballs. And the guy he walked, John Rave, is a 26-year-old leadoff man repeating Triple-A with a 13.5% walk rate. You’ll hardly take issue with that. And Horton retired the next three batters straight to get out of the inning (strikeout, infield popup, fly out).
SECOND INNING
The second inning is where he lost it a bit. After the first batter reached on a line drive single and stole second base, Horton started to get a little wild, walking the next batter on four straight balls, struggling to find the bottom corner of the zone. And he walked the batter after that on five pitches, none of which look particularly competitive.
…And then he uncorked a wild pitch that allowed a run to score.
… And then he walked a third batter in the inning (4th overall).
THIRD INNING
But that was really the end of the drama, because Horton came back out FIRING in the third, striking out the side on just 12 pitches total, including four whiffs.
FOURTH INNING
Horton’s fourth and final inning wasn’t perfectly clean, but it was still good. He faced one more than the minimum, allowing only a leadoff single (on another hard-hit ball), before recording his sixth and final strikeout.
So in reality, although there was some hard contact sprinkled throughout this game and you never like to see four walks and a wild pitch, it was more like three really good innings and then one short stretch where he just lost his command for whatever reason. To me, that’s a much better debut than the overall line would lead you to believe.
But perhaps my favorite part of Horton’s Triple-A debut is the fact that the Cubs let him throw 77 pitches. Horton had averaged 63 pitches per start at the Double-A level, so this is a pretty significant increase (not to mention just two pitches fewer than his previous career high).
I don’t think it’s a secret that the Cubs would love to see Cade Horton in the big leagues some time this season. And given his overall pedigree and upside, he’s probably headed straight into the rotation when that happens (as opposed to some exposure out of the pen (just my guess)). So my point here is this: When it comes to Horton’s run at Iowa, we’re not looking ONLY for results. We also want to see him get up and down five or six times in a game and push that pitch count into the 85-90 range. Once he can do that AND look good doing, he’ll be ready for Chicago.
So in that respect, this was a successful start. And I can’t wait for his next one.
