Cubs right-hander Cade Horton will undergo elbow surgery and miss the remainder of the 2026 season, manager Craig Counsell tells Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic. Per Meghan Montemurro of the Chicago Tribune, Horton has a torn ulnar collateral ligament. Whether he requires full Tommy John surgery or some sort of alternative won’t be known until the procedure is taking place. He is already on the 15-day injured list and will be transferred to the 60-day IL whenever the Cubs need to open a 40-man roster spot.
It’s a painful but unsurprising development for Horton. He started for the Cubs on Friday but threw a pitch that was about two miles per hour below his average. He summoned the trainer and was removed from the game, with the Cubs announcing his ailment as forearm discomfort. He was quickly placed on the IL and is now destined to stay there.
Horton entered the 2025 season as one of the top pitching prospects in the league. He delivered on that hype by giving the Cubs 118 innings with a 2.67 earned run average. He had big breakout potential here in 2026 but it will instead go down as a mostly lost season. The eventual details of his surgery will determine his path back to the mound. A full TJS usually has a timeline of 14 months or more, whereas an alternative such as the internal brace variety could allow a pitcher to return slightly quicker.
The young righty wasn’t called up until mid-May last year but pitched well enough to finish second in National League Rookie of the Year voting. As part of the Prospect Promotion Incentive, that gave him a full year of service time retroactively. He’ll continue to collect service time while on the IL this year and will get to the two-year mark. Along the way, he will turn 25 years old in August.
For the Cubs, they will have to proceed without Horton in their rotation plans for this year. They also lost Matthew Boyd to the IL in recent days, though his bicep strain seems fairly minor. From their season-opening rotation, they are down to the trio of Edward Cabrera, Jameson Taillon and Shota Imanaga. They began the campaign with Javier Assad optioned to the minors but he has quickly been recalled and will start today’s game. It seems likely that swingman Colin Rea will start tomorrow, though the Cubs haven’t made that official.
As mentioned, Boyd’s situation isn’t considered serious, so he could be back in a couple of weeks. There’s also Justin Steele, who is working his way back from his UCL surgery, which was performed around this time last year. He is on the 60-day IL and won’t be eligible for a return until late May.
In the short term, their depth is a bit questionable. Jaxon Wiggins is one the top pitching prospects in the league and he is pitching at Triple-A but he still needs to rein in his command. He walked 11.5% of batters faced last year and is up to 13.9% so far in 2026. Kyle Wright and Vince Velasquez are non-roster guys with big league experience but neither has been in the majors since 2023 and Wright is currently on the minor league IL.
Photo courtesy of Ken Blaze, Imagn Images
Well this sucks. Dang it, I feel so bad him.
That sucks. As a baseball fan i hope he comes back as good as he was in 2025
as a baseball fan and a fan of young emerging talent, this is terrible!
heal up horton! stay strong cubs fans
Cmon ben brown baby
Brown has no business being a starting pitcher – he only has 2 pitches! He is a reliever and not even a very good one (so far). No, it will be Assad and eventually Colin Rae (once he’s stretched out) picking up the slack.
He added a sinker during ST. Maybe there’s hope (or not).
Happens way too much.
Yet they continue worrying about number of pitches. That is obviously not the answer. Cubs did everything by the book last year and still this happened . These guys throwing max effort all the time with such big velo and spin is just something the ligament cannot handle.
It’s got nothing or very little anyway with MLB. These players play year round now and throw thousands of pitches a year in travel ball.
Coop I could not agree more. They worry about the number of pitches and starters now can’t even go five innings like they’re trying to protect their health. It’s the definition of stupid. When they do pitch they throw like absolute maniacs and completely disregard their own health while they’re doing it. The way these guys are coddled and the way they deal with them now is the definition of insanity. Keep doing the same thing and hope for different results. It’s just one surgery after another never ends.
Just think if TJS didn’t exist how many pitchers careers would be over before they even started
35-40% of active pitchers have had the surgery.
This will also be the second TJ procedure for Cade Horton. He had his first UCL reconstruction back in 2021 while in college, missing his freshman season at Oklahoma.
Dang, that’s a bummer
Wad pretty common in the 70’s and 80’s, pitcher’s careers ended by “dead arm” was likely this.
Tommy John had his surgery in 1974, identifying a torn UCL has been around for over 50 years. They would know if it was the cause of a “dead arm.”
Tommy John was a special case where his doctor Dr. Jobe didn’t use an MRI machine to diagnose him as it didn’t exist then. Instead, he used a bunch of other tests to make an educated guess. It wasn’t until he went into his elbow to confirm a torn UCL.
MRIs didn’t enter clinical use until the 80s.
And there it is, what we all feared. This sucks…
Man, what a gut punch
Big blow for the Cubs
👎
On the horizon: Robo Umps
Next up: Robo Pitchers or at least Robo Arms?
2028 at the absolute earliest, and not a second earlier.
Second time for Cade unfortunately. As long as pitchers continue to throw at max velo and spin the ball like they do, this trend will continue. It’s not # of pitches – it’s the pitches themselves.
Greg Maddux and Fergie Jenkins were two of my favorite pitchers, and I don’t think either one had any arm surgeries. And they were great pitchers.
You are correct sir. They never had arm issues. I’m getting this from Lougle AI so it could be wrong but you’re right both were incredible throughout their HoF careers
Such is today’s reality. If they throw slower, they won’t make or stay in the big leagues. The bar has risen for both pitchers and hitters.
@rememberthecoop
This is why Mason Miller is a tinking time bomb. He’s throwing over 102 most of the time. That’s not good. Not sure if he’s had surgery or elbow issues throughout his career. It’s only as matter of time before he’ll also need UCL or worse TJS
This is horrible news. One Horton is one of the Cubs better starters, and after Matthew Boyd goes on the IL this is even worse. And also, he’s a young talent.
This might not be the year for the Cubs. Maybe next year.
If there’s any baseball at all next season. Hopefully the new CBA gets worked out. At these early stages it’s not encouraging.
There will be a full 162 game season because the owners stand to lose far more than the players.
I can’t say I’m surprised because you could see it in his face when he came off the field that he knew it wasn’t good. It’s definitely a blow to then Cubs because he was their best starter. Too bad I quit drinking.
I’ll gladly take a few swigs for you Unc. I don’t drink alcohol a lot mostly socially. I prefer weed over alcohol. Less consequences after.
The thing I absolutely hate the most though about this is that all the casuals are coming out of the woodwork saying the season is over. They’ll be lucky to finish as a WC team or they’re now at most a WC team.
Stuff like that that gets to me is so irritating and it hate that I let myself get irritated by it.
This sucks so much.