Chicago Cubs prospect Cade Horton shines in his debut

In the first start to his professional baseball career, one of the Chicago Cubs' top prospects, Cade Horton, got to work early and shine for the Low-A Myrtle Beach Pelicans. After firing 2.1 scoreless frames, Horton struck out five and only allowed two hits on the night before being pulled. He threw 47 pitches, 30 of them for strikes, and looked every bit the part the Cubs envisioned him to be when they selected him in the first round of the MLB draft with the 7th overall pick just a season ago.

Filthy movement on this slider down and into a left-handed hitter. In the 3rd inning, Horton allowed an unlucky infield single, subsequently prolonging his inning, which led to a higher pitch count. Nevertheless, at age 21, the hope is that Horton can move up quickly through the ranks and, hopefully, be eyeing the nod to Double-A Tennessee this year.

With recent prospects being taken off the board due to ineligibility with the numbers of innings they're pitches or at-bats they've now seen in the majors, Horton recently cracked MLB Pipeline's list of top 100 prospects. He was initially slotted into spot 100 but has since moved up higher to number 95.

Chicago Cubs: What's next for Cade Horton?

Next on the agenda will slowly but surely be getting Horton stretched out for a higher workload. In 2022, he only pitched 53.2 innings over 11 starts and 13 appearances. Most importantly, you want to see Horton fully control his arsenal. Horton's elite slider has been noteworthy in the past and his upper 90's fastball gives him two strong pitches that will find him success where he is now.

Moving forward, you'd love to see him implement his changeup and curveball more frequently to keep hitters further guessing at the higher levels of the minors. Ideally, this can be done sooner rather than later so he already has good command and finds quicker success at the higher levels of the minors. From what we've seen today, his potential is sky-high.