The Chicago Cubs will be without breakout rookie starting pitcher Cade Horton in the NL Wild Card series, leaving a fledgling rotation in a questionable state for the playoffs.
Saturday was the textbook example of a mixed bag for the Chicago Cubs and their fans, who had plenty of reason to both celebrate and doubt their team throughout the course of the day.
On one hand, the 91-win North Siders handily defeated the archrival St. Louis Cardinals on Saturday, securing pivotal home-field advantage in the upcoming best-of-three Wild Card series against the San Diego Padres, the team’s first playoff series since 2020.
Yet before Saturday’s contest even began, news broke that National League Rookie of the Year candidate Cade Horton would be placed on the 15-day injured list with a right rib fracture, keeping him out of action until a Game 5 of the NLDS at the earliest, though roster configurations for playoff series mean Horton would likely be out until a potential NLCS.
Prior to the injury, it was assumed that Horton would be handed the ball in the opener of the series against the Padres, as the rookie has drawn comparisons to Jake Arrieta’s historic second half of the 2015 season with his output since the All-Star break.
Holding an excellent 2.67 ERA for the season, Horton’s numbers for the second half are simply video game-like – an 8-1 record with a 1.03 ERA over 12 starts and 61.1 innings alongside 15 walks and 54 strikeouts.
The unmistakable momentum the 24-year-old rookie generated made him an easy pick to be a Game 1 starter despite his lack of experience, though the Cubs will now have to look elsewhere.
Though a strength to enter the season, injuries across the board have hampered a productive but inconsistent starting rotation. After losing Justin Steele to a season-ending injury in April, both Jameson Taillon and Shota Imanaga have spent time on the injured list this season as well.
The Cubs now figure to lead off their playoff series with Matthew Boyd and Shota Imanaga in an undetermined order, though I’d imagine Imanaga would get the nod despite yielding eight earned runs in his last outing against the New York Mets.
Despite factoring in as a Cy Young Award candidate for much of the first half of the season, Boyd has posted ghastly numbers in September, making the veteran southpaw and innings pitched leader a bit of a wild card (no pun intended) in a possible playoff start.
Even with a solid outing of two-run ball over 5.1 innings, Boyd holds a 5.31 ERA over four September starts, following a 4.54 ERA over six starts in August. Boyd’s ERA was below 2 in both June and July, which at the time strongly bolstered his case as one of the senior circuit’s best pitchers before a discernible second-half drop-off.
A Game 3 would almost certainly go to Jameson Taillon, with Sunday’s starter Javier Assad expected to factor in as a multi-inning reliever in the postseason as well.
While the Cubs are a stronger offensive team than the Padres that appears to be finding its form in the final games of the season, San Diego still has a lineup that is not one to sneeze at.
Though the Friars have the third-least amount of home runs in baseball, they maintain a lineup with plenty of slug that is able to capitalize on mistakes – much more than one would expect from a team 28th of 30 in home runs.
With considerable power from Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, Jackson Merrill and Gavin Sheets, the Dads also have the game’s finest contact hitter in Luis Arráez, who has hit .311 in the second half of the season after an uncharacteristically slow first half.
Even with Horton out, it’s fair to see a scenario in which the Cubs rotation can match San Diego’s – while Nick Pivetta has been excellent this season, the team has seen more inconsistent output from veterans Dylan Cease and Yu Darvish along with an above average season from Randy Vásquez.
While Pivetta figures to start Game 1 on extra rest, there’s plenty of questions as to how the Padres will fill out their rotation for the best-of-three affair.
However, what makes this series an even taller task for the Cubs in Horton’s absence is the Padres’ dominant bullpen, matched up against a Cubs bullpen that has been wildly inconsistent for much of the season.
The Padres boast a bullpen of three All-Stars, headlined by star closer Robert Suarez, with outstanding campaigns from lefty Adrián Morejón and right-hander Jason Adam. The pen also includes strikeout extraordinaire and former Cub Jeremiah Estrada, who has fanned 105 hitters across 72 innings of work in 2025.
While the Cubs’ bullpen has put together some dominant stretches throughout the course of the season, it’s anyone’s guess as to which bullpen the North Siders will get in October.
The Cubs do seem to at least have their closer spot figured out once again, getting Daniel Palencia back in time and ramped up for the postseason, though the experienced Suarez still gives San Diego an advantage in the ninth inning.
While Caleb Thielbar and Brad Keller have been excellent all year long, the Cubs have had plenty of revolving doors among the relief corps this season. It’s been a mixed bag of results across the board, with a major success on the comeback of veteran left-hander Drew Pomeranz, though his output has not quite been replicated by other buy-low type players.
The Cubs parted ways with a struggling Ryan Pressly after he posted a 4.35 ERA over 44 games and also got underwhelming results from returning relievers Porter Hodge and Nate Pearson. While Andrew Kittredge has been impactful for the Cubs upon his acquisition, fellow deadline pick-up Taylor Rogers has compiled an ERA over 5 since arriving in the Windy City from Cincinnati.
Although it’s very conceivable that the Cubs’ bullpen could keep an inconsistent Padres offense at bay enough to win a best-of-three series, the Padres enter the matchup with most of the advantages besides the park the game is played at.
Returning to the postseason for their second straight year and the third time in the last four seasons, the Padres have their sights set on a World Series title, motivated and bruised by past playoff disappointments.
While the Cubs have plenty of playoff experience on their roster and two World Series champion starters in Kyle Tucker and Dansby Swanson, this group of North Siders has yet to experience an October run together, with the Cubs last appearing in the playoffs in 2020.
The Cubs simply will have their best bet at pulling out a victory in the Wild Card Series if they outslug the Padres – with a rotation far from the postseason’s most threatening, the Cubs will have plenty of opportunities to score enough runs to render San Diego’s bullpen advantage meaningless.
Though the Padres would certainly prefer the games to be played in the more pitcher-friendly Petco Park, there’s no telling what kind of conditions hitters will be dealt at Wrigley Field – which can hurt the Cubs as much as it can help them, with a breeze off Lake Michigan that can turn flyball hitters into sluggers on any given night.
With that said, Chicago is still going to need some stability from the pitching staff – beyond the likely rotation of Imanaga, Boyd and Taillon, both Assad and Colin Rea have the potential to play pivotal roles in the middle innings in the event that there’s a slugfest and/or a struggling starter.
I am anticipating a Padres victory in the series, quite possibly in just two games, with experience and a chip on the shoulder from falling short of the NL West title late in the season fueling a hungry San Diego club searching for its first-ever World Series title.
Yet this is far from an insurmountable matchup for the Cubs, even with Horton’s injury. For a team that has generated a comparatively small amount of playoff buzz after a thunderous start to the season, it only takes two wins at Wrigley Field to flip the script from an underwhelming playoff team with a first-round exit to a pennant contender.
The winner of the series will go on to face the Milwaukee Brewers, who will finish the 2025 season with the best record in MLB thanks to a 54-25 summer.
This of course provides some extra fuel for the Cubs, who entered the season as undisputed NL Central favorites and at least should have a chip on their shoulder themselves, aiming to secure a chance to take down the three-time defending NL Central champions on a postseason stage.
This week, Cubs fans of different ages will likely be feeling vastly different things – the Padres matchup will stir nightmares of the 1984 NLCS for fans who were around to see that. Younger fans who mostly look back to the Cubs team of a decade ago will be dreaming of another magical run witnessed just nine years ago. Plenty of other fans will simply be awaiting the heartbreak Chicagoans are more than used to.
As a fan myself, I’m not even entirely sure what to think, as it feels like I have been more excited about nearly every Cubs playoff team in my lifetime before this year’s club, for a myriad of reasons.
Injuries have provided a constant damper, offensive production heavily tapered off after a thunderous first couple of months, there’s plenty of doubt regarding a potential reunion with Kyle Tucker and the rival Brewers once again come out on top of the division.
Yet beneath the righteous expectations that should be placed on the fourth-most valuable team in baseball, they will still finish the season as a 91+ win club while having a chance to claw through the postseason and win it all – after the crushing disappointment of 2023 and 2024, it’s hard to be too upset in that regard.
Anything can happen in October, especially in these Wild Card rounds that are merely a few years old. In their first full-season of implementation, it was the 6-seeded Philadelphia Phillies who crawled into the postseason that ultimately won the NL pennant, upsetting the Cardinals, Atlanta Braves and Padres along the way.
Yet those same Phillies showed the flip side of what the Wild Card round could mean the following season, when the Miami Marlins were ran out of Citizens Bank Park in two games while scoring just two runs. As much as the series can serve as a triumphant opening to a riveting postseason run, it can also act as a forgettable footnote to a disappointing season.
In a matchup with two teams that both clearly have something to prove, the highs and lows will be even more potent this week at Clark and Addison in Chicago.
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