Quick Injury Updates on Ben Brown, Jordan Wicks, Cade Horton

I’m feeling pretty mentally drained at the moment, so let’s just attack this in rapid-fire form and get on to the next thing. In addition to talking about how the Cubs can find value at the margins, Jed Hoyer provided health updates on a few young pitchers. Whether and how Ben Brown, Jordan Wicks, and Cade Horton bounce back over the winter will have a significant impact on how the team is able to build a consistent winner. And if the Cubs indeed target a top-of-the-rotation starter in free agency, we could see one of their in-house arms moved to address other needs.

Let’s get to it. Brown was shut down in early June after just 55.1 innings due to what was being called at a the time a stress reaction in his neck. The Cubs have since updated that diagnosis as a “benign area of concern,” whatever that means, and Brown is due for another scan in mid-November to assess his readiness to resume full activities.

“Our hope is that he has a no-restrictions offseason,” Hoyer told Maddie Lee of the Sun-Times. “But I don’t think we’ll know that for a couple weeks.

Wicks was sidelined for over two months in the middle of the season with an oblique strain and then hit the IL again at the end of the season due to what was said at the time to be the same issue. Imaging revealed that it was actually a rib issue causing tightness in the same area, which was apparently encouraging news. The lefty is expected to have a normal offseason.

Horton is the one whose absence concerned me the most, and it continues to as he works back from what the team says was a subscapularis strain in his right shoulder. In case you were not already aware, the subscapularis is the largest muscle in the rotator cuff and helps to internally rotate the arm. There are several red flags even if we just take this at face value, but my worry deals more with the veiled nature of any medical information the Cubs reveal.

The true nature of player injuries, particular with prospects, is often kept out of the public conversation. There are also cases like Yu Darvish in 2018 in which standard imaging and diagnostics are not enough to uncover the actual issue. My fear with Horton is that there could be something more significant than just a strain, or that that tear — because that’s what strains really are — is more severe than initially believed. I am familiar with another situation in which a pitching prospect was initially diagnosed with the same thing as Horton, only to eventually undergo shoulder surgery.

Horton appeared to be primed for his MLB debut in 2024 until the shoulder issue derailed things and the Cubs’ top pitching prospect could still make it happen in ’25. However, Lee reported that he has yet to begin an offseason throwing progression and will undoubtedly be treated with kid gloves after pitching just 34.1 innings across nine starts this past season. Keep in mind that Horton missed a huge chunk of his college career due to Tommy John surgery too.

The Cubs are going to take it very easy with him, which probably means a late start to spring training in the best case. Provided everything checks out healthwise and he’s able to return by April or May, I could see him getting some run as a reliever late in the season.