Craig Counsell doesn’t have magic dust for pitchers’ arms. Look around the league and look at what the Cubs have done within their system and pitchers are incrementally stretched. All of baseball does this, especially when a guy is super talented and has significant injury history like Cade Horton.
Let’s revisit this later in the year - the Cubs are going to aim for 120-130 innings from Cade this year and I think there’s a really good chance a fair chunk of those come in Chicago as long as he stays healthy. I fully expect the Cubs and Counsell to manage to get Horton through the season, including having him available to pitch in the post-season. That’s why they’ll likely start him slow.
A full season starter likely gets around 30-32 starts. If you average 5 innings per start, that’s 150-160 innings. If Cade spends April at the complex in extended spring training, that knocks 5 starts out. He goes to AA or AAA for a month in May for probably 3-4 starts minimum, building up to about 6 innings. That’s probably 16-20 innings, minimum, in the minors before. Once he gets to that point, as long as he’s healthy/effective, he’d be in play to come up when there’s a need in the rotation. Once they hit June, you’re now looking at 20-22 starts, which is probably 100-110 innings plus the 15-20 he’s thrown in the minors and that’s about right. That gets him through the season, increases his season load by about 50% over 2023, likely leaves him some post-season innings and then sets him up to be a 150+ innings guy starting in 2025.
If there aren’t any rotation openings by June, he’s pitching about every 6th day in the minors, building up, but still managing the innings load so that he can be full go in Chicago when he’s needed.
