Despite a rough outing, Cade Horton's spring start revealed two promising things, offering optimism for the season ahead.
Every pitcher will go through bad outings. It’s just a part of baseball.
When those bad outings happen in Spring Training, fans should not bat an eye. That should be the case with Chicago Cubs pitcher Cade Horton after he struggled in his third spring appearance on Tuesday against the Texas Rangers.
Horton allowed six runs on six hits with two walks and two strikeouts across 3 ⅔ innings pitched. The Rangers were all over him in this contest, as the right-hander gave up three home runs in the ballgame.
Cubs fans aren’t used to seeing Horton struggle, so it does come as a surprise when he does. His six earned runs allowed in Tuesday’s Spring Training start were almost as many runs as he gave up in his final 12 starts of last season combined (seven).
However, there were still a lot of positives to take away from Horton’s start. He induced seven whiffs in this outing, including four swings-and-misses on his sweeper. Those seven whiffs were his most in a game this spring.
His velocity also remained steady on Tuesday. He averaged 95.9 mph on his four-seam fastball and hit 97.6 mph on the radar gun. The velocity on his sweeper, curveball, sinker, and changeup were up across the board as well.
Here is what Horton had to say to reporters following that rough outing.
“It really is all about getting ready for Opening Day,” Horton told reporters in Arizona. “I can take a lot of good out of what I did today. Obviously, the results were pretty bad, but it is what it is. So, I’ll just get ready for the next one.”
This was definitely a poor start for Horton, especially since he looked solid in his first two appearances this spring. He threw two scoreless innings with two strikeouts against the Rockies on February 25 and threw three shutout innings with three strikeouts against Team Italy on March 3.
It’s better to see these types of bad outings in Spring Training than in the regular season. Horton will now go back to the drawing board and figure out what went wrong in Tuesday’s start. These are the starts that pitchers can learn a lot from.
With only two weeks remaining until Opening Day, Horton might only make one more start before the beginning of the regular season. He is looking to build off of a promising rookie campaign in which he finished with a 2.67 ERA and 97 strikeouts.