Chicago Cubs promote pitcher Cade Horton to Triple-A

MLB has Horton ranked No. 23 in the 2024 prospect rankings. His profile states that he “was one of the top two-way prospects and two-sport talents in the 2020 Draft, he went unselected because he wanted to play baseball and football at Oklahoma. He never got any time at quarterback for the Sooners and missed his first baseball season following Tommy John surgery in February 2021. But, he came back to dominate in the 2022 postseason and lead Oklahoma to a second-place finish at the College World Series.”

Cade Horton stood out in a big way at Oklahoma

In 2022, Horton finished his only full season at Oklahoma with a 5-2 record and 4.86 ERA with 64 strikeouts and only 15 walks in over 53.2 innings. His play led to him being named a Freshman All-American by Baseball America and D1 Baseball.

Oklahoma coach Skip Johnson talked about the growth of Horton after having Tommy Johnson surgery during the 2020-21 season. “I’ll never forget this as long as I live, we just got beat in Tulsa from playing Oklahoma State, and he’s sitting right behind my bus seat, and I turn around and he stared out the window all night long, the whole ride home. I thought to myself, I was like, this guy is made of something different. Being a coach, you’ve got to look at stuff like that. You’ve got to find the value in what those guys go through,” Johnson said in 2022.

“When he started and coming back from the fall, our trainers and our strength coaches did an outstanding job of every day doing something with him to get him better, and then we started the season off the first month, he was our starting third baseman. We kind of knew what was going to happen, if it went down that road, his arm started feeling better. We started throwing bullpens.”