A few weeks ago I wrote about the status of three young pitchers and whether the updates on their respective injuries would impact how aggressive the Cubs would be in their pursuit of more pitching talent this offseason. While it appears the Cubs will target at least one upgrade for the starting rotation regardless, the team also got their best offseason news yet this week.

According to Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic, Cubs pitcher Ben Brown has been medically cleared to proceed with a normal offseason program after missing the majority of the 2024 season with an unprecedented neck injury.

Via The Athletic.

Ben Brown has been cleared for a normal offseason throwing program, according to a team source. An unusual neck injury sidelined Brown, 25, for more than half of his rookie year — he did not pitch in a game after June 8 — denying the Cubs the chance to see one of their most promising pitchers develop.

The young righty was used both in the bullpen and in the rotation during the first half of the 2024 season and you could tell Brown was on the verge of taking the next step before the neck injury stopped his progress. Brown posted a 3.58 ERA in 55.1 innings, including a 3.23 ERA in eight starts.

Fingers crossed that there are no more setbacks for Brown and he can enter 2025 as a legit candidate to win a starting rotation spot. The one hurdle for Brown and him putting together a full season is that the 25-year-old has not thrown more than 104 innings in any year since becoming a pro in 2017. It seems unlikely that the Cubs are penciling him in for 130+ innings in 2025, but as we saw during his first stint in the majors Brown was equally impressive coming out of the bullpen, showing closer potential.

We’ll see how the Cubs plan to spread out Brown’s innings in 2025, but for now it’s a great sign that he’ll have a normal offseason after that bizarre neck issue.

(Injury Questions)

Pitching will be the number one priority for the Chicago Cubs this offseason, but injury updates could make their pursuit for arms much more aggressive.

The 2024 season was supposed to be set up for a trio of Cubs prospects to make their mark in the majors and while we saw a few glimpses of what could have been the year was overshadowed by injuries for those three pitchers. Ben Brown and Jordan Wicks combined to throw 101.1 innings in 26 total appearances, while the organization’s top pitching prospect entering the year, Cade Horton, missed most of the year because of a shoulder injury.

Cubs president Jed Hoyer gave updates on all three pitchers last week at the GM Meetings and while it might be silly to speculate on their health during November, I can’t help but feel a tiny bit uneasy about a couple of these guys. Let’s start with the best(?) update.

Jordan Wicks

The lefty made 10 starts and one relief appearance in 2024, missing big chunks of the season with a strained forearm and then an oblique issue that at first was thought to be a repeat injury in September. It turns out that when Wicks was sidelined for the final couple weeks of the regular season he didn’t have the same oblique strain from the summer and instead it was a rib injury.

And well, the Cubs and Wicks are viewing that revelation as a positive.

Via the Chicago Sun-Times.

Left-hander Jordan Wicks’ season ended a couple weeks early, when he began feeling discomfort near his oblique. He’d already spent two and a half months on the IL for a strained right oblique. But he and the Cubs were encouraged when imaging showed that his late-season injury was actually a rib issue, which was causing tightness in the area.

The Cubs expect Wicks to have a normal offseason, so that’s an encouraging sign for the lefty. The 2021 first round pick will once again be in the starting rotation mix in spring training. If healthy, of course.

Ben Brown

Right-hander Ben Brown showed the most promise from the Cubs minor league system in the first half of the 2024 season, but then he was abruptly shut down in June. The team initially diagnosed him with a stress reaction in his neck. After a few setbacks during the summer, Brown was officially ruled out for the year and the team updated the issue as a “benign area of concern” in August.

So yeah, no idea what that means and the Cubs still have to wait for further tests to reveal how Brown’s offseason will proceed.

 Rookie right-hander Ben Brown is scheduled to have another scan in mid-November to make sure a benign area of concern in his neck has fully dissipated.

“Our hope is that he has a no-restrictions offseason,” Hoyer said Monday. “But I don’t think we’ll know that for a couple weeks.”

Fingers crossed I guess?

Cade Horton

Cade Horton looked phenomenal during his pro debut in 2023, ending the season at Double-A and primed to make his big-league debut with the Cubs in 2024. The righty was promoted to Triple-A following four April starts at Double-A this past season, but Horton only tossed 18 more innings the rest of the year.

Horton was placed on the injured list on May 31, and did not return to game action, but now he is on track to begin his offseason work.

Their top pitching prospect, right-hander Cade Horton, made just nine starts because of a strain of the subscapularis in his right shoulder that wiped out the rest of his season. Before the injury, he had seemed likely to debut this year. He’s now on track to start a throwing progression this offseason.

Horton was the seventh overall pick in the 2022 MLB Draft out of Oklahoma after only throwing 53.1 innings in college. The right-hander has already had Tommy John surgery and after seeing him miss most of 2024 with a shoulder injury I’m certainly not as optimistic about Horton as I was a year ago.

Again, fingers crossed that Horton’s arm issues are behind him, but even if all goes well from now until spring training, his 2025 season might still be delayed because we’ve already seen the Cubs take a cautious approach with Horton since drafting him.

Could Cubs Acquire Multiple Starting Pitchers?

In terms of being more aggressive, I don’t think these updates will influence the Cubs when it comes to big free agent commitments like a Max Fried, who seems like the big starter the team may be targeting this offseason.

However, if the organization eventually feels uncomfortable with what it sees from Brown’s further testing or Horton’s progress, could that influence the front office into a second significant addition to the rotation. That could be anything from one-year deals for Shane Bieber or Walker Buehler or a trade, maybe with the Mariners or White Sox for one of their pitching studs?

I feel confident that the Cubs will make one major pitching acquisition this offseason, but maybe the question marks surrounding a few of their younger pitchers pushes the front office into making multiple additions that move the needle.