Pitcher Cade Horton will undergo season-ending elbow surgery -- 'a punch in the face' for Cubs

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — For a second consecutive April, the Chicago Cubs must navigate losing arguably their best starting pitcher for the rest of the season.

Initial optimism about right-hander Cade Horton’s forearm strain instead became another worst-case scenario Tuesday, when Cubs manager Craig Counsell revealed that Horton has a torn ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) and will undergo season-ending surgery.

The extent of the tear and the type of procedure needed won’t be known until the surgery is underway. The surgery hasn’t been scheduled, Counsell said, and it won’t happen this week.

“It’s a punch in the face for sure, but that’s just part of this job,” general manager Carter Hawkins said. “Part of what everybody that’s in baseball understands is the success is never going to be linear. You’re always going to have to fight through these things.

“The teams that win championships are resilient, and we have to figure out ways to step up and still have a really, really solid team. Still have an opportunity to do a lot of special things, and that’s the plan and we’re going to put everything forward to make that happen.”

Losing Horton is a devastating blow to the Cubs’ aspirations for a deeper playoff run in October, while for Horton, 24, it’s another frustrating development.

He missed the 2025 postseason while recovering from a right rib fracture he sustained a week before the playoffs started. Horton would have been able to rejoin the team had the Cubs advanced to the National League Championship Series, but that was thwarted with their Game 5 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Division Series.

Horton’s 2025 performance, which featured a 2.67 ERA and 144 ERA+ in 118 innings, earned him a second-place finish in voting for the NL Rookie of the Year award.

His success last year helped lessen the blow of losing left-hander Justin Steele for the season in early April to elbow surgery. Unlike Steele’s injury — of which there were initial signs in September 2024 with elbow tendinitis that required a two-week stint on the injured list — there were no indications, even behind the scenes, of any underlying issues with Horton’s arm, Hawkins said.

“First of all, I feel for Cade,” Counsell said. “These things get thrown in front of you that are big, and processing it on a day like today for Cade is really hard because you just start to look at what’s ahead of you and there’s a lot of long days of monotonous work. … It makes you try to cherish the good days that you have and understand that we don’t get all good days. This certainly isn’t one of them for Cade.

“From a team perspective, we have to look at this as someone else is going to get a chance and there’s going to be an opportunity for someone else to prove they can be part of a great baseball team.”

The Cubs managed Horton’s workload last year, often limiting him to 75 to 80 pitches as he made a huge jump in innings from 2024, when he missed most of the season because of a shoulder injury. Hawkins said the Cubs will do a full postmortem to try to figure out what they could do better and apply what they learn as they aim to improve health and injury prevention.

“We’ve been doing that for years now, and I think we’re limiting the risk of our pitchers because of that, but it doesn’t eliminate the risk of our pitchers,” Hawkins said. “Obviously this injury shows that. You accept that risk anytime a guy goes onto the mound. You do everything you possibly can, you try to learn when things don’t go well. It’s easy to throw your hands up and go, hey, it just happens. I think that’s kind of a lazy point of view.”

This marks the second UCL surgery for Horton, who underwent Tommy John surgery in 2021 before his freshman year at Oklahoma. He pitched in 14 games during his lone season for the Sooners in 2022 before the Cubs selected him with the No. 7 pick that year.

“It’s experience, it’s not unknown, and I think that always helps,” Counsell said of Horton’s previous elbow surgery. “There’s also some parts of it that are probably discouraging in terms of the work ahead of you. You just don’t get to compete, and that’s what you love to do.”

Horton departed his second start of the season in the middle of a second-inning at-bat Friday in Cleveland after experiencing discomfort in his forearm. The sensation originated in his wrist and spread to his forearm, prompting him to look toward the Cubs dugout after a 1-1 fastball that registered at 93.8 mph, nearly 2 mph below his average velocity.

Horton returned to Chicago on Sunday and was examined Monday by team doctor Stephen Gryzlo, which included imaging. He received another opinion Tuesday morning from Dr. Keith Meister in Texas, and surgery was decided as the best route.

Veteran right-hander Colin Rea is positioned to slide into Horton’s spot in the rotation, which comes up Wednesday in the series finale against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. Right-hander Javier Assad started Tuesday night in place of left-hander Matthew Boyd, who went on the 15-day IL on Monday with a biceps strain.

Losing Horton for the year and being without Boyd for at least two weeks doesn’t change how the Cubs will utilize Ben Brown because Counsell believes Brown’s usage in his first three outings this year have prepared him well if they need the right-hander to start.

“It’s not all on Colin, or it’s not all on the guy that replaces Colin in the bullpen,” Counsell said. “We all have to do our part. That’s what you do. We’ve got an opportunity ahead of us. That’s how you look at it.”

The Cubs found themselves in the same position at this point last year with Steele, who made his fourth and final start of the 2025 season on April 7. The tear was discovered after that, prompting surgery in mid-April.

Steele is on track to rejoin the Cubs rotation as early as May 24, when he is eligible to come off the 60-day IL. Hawkins called an early June return for Steele “an optimal outcome” and said they want him to be the best version of himself. Horton could face a similar timetable to be back next season.

While the Cubs will keep on eye on potential external additions, whether through a trade or an unsigned free agent — the most notable of which is veteran Lucas Giolito — that is not the likeliest path to filling Horton’s innings at this point in the year.

“In April, it’s difficult to make moves like that,” Hawkins said, “but at the same time we’ll obviously keep our lines in the water and you never know what opportunities might come up. But right now I would focus on the guys internally.”