Cade Horton<\/a> went 11-4, 2.67 in his first season, throwing 118 innings with 90 strikeouts and a 1.08 WHIP. None of that is out of line with his minor-league production, and so the immediate conclusion is that this is who he is.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s mighty good news for the Cubs, who rarely develop top-line starters and have been depending on a collection of aging imports and veterans both in the rotation and in the bullpen. The bullpen arms change every year or two \u2014 the Cubs are always panning for relief gold. But the starters cost real money and if they fail, it\u2019s a problem.<\/p>\n
The Cubs had that problem last year, and made the playoffs in spite of those losses, largely on the strength of Horton\u2019s right arm as he brought the spark the offense had let go out. He got a good many of the RoY votes but didn\u2019t win. He was robbed. If he hadn\u2019t gotten hurt with the playoffs looming, he might well have been the winner.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old former No. 7 overall pick turned in a 2.0 bWAR (2.2 fWAR) campaign, and there\u2019s every reason to suspect that he will do better in a full-length season. Projections don\u2019t give him full-time innings, most penciling him in for between 20-25 starts. He does have a bit of an injury history.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll have to see if that\u2019s the case. If it isn\u2019t, we\u2019re looking at between 12-15 wins, I should think. A 162-game average based on his one season would have him 17-6 with 147 Ks. Let\u2019s hope so, and hope that Horton gets to pitch on the big stage this year.<\/p>\n
Sh\u014dta Imanaga tomorrow. Jameson Taillon Thursday, and a longer Edward Cabrera feature Friday to cap the week off right,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today we look at the Cubs\u2019 young starter, who had a remarkable rookie season. Cade Horton went 11-4,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,735,138,24,4245,161,4914,5173,4,4271],"class_list":["post-564668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-cubs","tag-baseball","tag-cade-horton","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-chicagocubs","tag-cubs","tag-edward-cabrera","tag-jameson-taillon","tag-mlb","tag-the-cubs"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116048025584283417","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}