Cubs secure home field for the Wild Card, lose Cade Horton

With Saturday’s 7-3 win over the Cardinals, the Cubs secured home field advantage for the wild card round that begins next Tuesday against the Padres. This means that, for the first time in eight years, Wrigley Field will host playoff games with fans in attendance.

“There’s no better fanbase than the city of Chicago,” Michael Busch said. “They’ve been so good to us all year. It’s going to be fun, it’s going to be special for us [and] for them, and for the city.”

The Cubs will go into that series against San Diego with plenty of positive momentum. Busch nearly hit for the cycle on Saturday, missing only the single, but he achieved something even more rare by homering twice and hitting a double and a triple. In his last at-bat of the afternoon, Cardinals manager Oli Marmol elected to intentionally walk Busch, who had a 1.479 OPS against the Cardinals this season going into Saturday’s game.

“Anytime you can do [that] against anybody, but from a fan base perspective, being able to do it against your rivals makes it a little sweeter,” Busch said.

Along with the first baseman, Seiya Suzuki and Pete Crow-Armstrong both homered Saturday. Suzuki has a 1.179 OPS in his last seven games, and Crow-Armstrong has also been trending upward at the plate in the last week or so. On the other side of that coin, the Cubs’ pitching staff is headed into the first round of the postseason with a couple of recent quality starts from Colin Rea and Jameson Taillon. Rea bested St. Louis on Friday, and on Saturday, Taillon notched his 14th quality start of the season, holding the Cardinals to three hits and just one run in six innings.

“Today felt pretty important,” Taillon said. “Just waking up in the morning, I had a sense of urgency, wanting to come and get it done. Obviously, the playoffs are kind of a season of its own, but just going into the playoffs with some good momentum and a couple of good starts under my belt and being healthy here for a little while, it’s been nice.”

That positive momentum for the team does come with one caveat: Shortly before Saturday’s game, the Cubs announced that starting pitcher Cade Horton was being placed on the 15-day injured list with a right rib fracture.

The move is retroactive to September 25, which means that the most optimistic timeline for Horton is that he could return by October 11, which would line up with a potential Game 5 of the division series. But that is, of course, assuming the Cubs get that far. They have to beat the Padres next week and then keep winning in the division series after that just to create the opportunity for Horton to return.

This is a big blow for the starting rotation and for the team as a whole. Horton had an MLB-best 1.03 ERA in the second half of the season, and he was expected to start one of the wild card games. The rookie starter worked hard to get back on the mound after he was diagnosed with the rib fracture on Wednesday; before Saturday’s game Horton was playing catch in the outfield and had plans to throw a bullpen session the next day. But during that outfield throwing, Horton still felt discomfort and had trouble getting full extension, according to team president Jed Hoyer.

“He’s a tough kid, but I think when it became clear he couldn’t throw without feeling it and having that discomfort, you can’t risk the compensation,” Hoyer said. “And I also don’t know if you’d be able to be effective if he was unable to get extension and unable to throw it without feeling it.”

There’s no timeline for a possible return during the playoffs for Horton, Hoyer said; at this point they will have to wait a few days and see how much better he feels. During the postseason, teams have to submit rosters by round, so if the Cubs advance past the Padres, then they will have to assess whether they think Horton can return during the division series. If they believe that’s possible, they would have to include him on the division series roster from the get-go, which could mean they risk holding a spot for him and Horton not being ready to pitch.

“It’s a blow,” manager Craig Counsell said. “There’s no question about it, and it’s unfortunate. It means that other people are going to get an opportunity to have a chance to impact the game and have success and control what happens.

“Losing players to injury at this time of year, it’s not fun. The player puts a lot into it. This is the best time of the year, everybody knows that. It hurts. It hurts to have to miss at least the first part of it.”

For what it’s worth, the Cubs have worked around not having their best starting pitchers all season. Justin Steele has been out since April with an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery, and both Shota Imanaga and Jameson Taillon have missed significant amounts of time to injury. So if there’s anything the Cubs are used to navigating this season, it’s winning despite not having a fully intact rotation. That’s where guys like Rea stepping up has been crucial, and they will need that to continue beginning next week.

The Cubs have not been in the postseason since 2020, haven’t hosted a game with fans in attendance since the 13-inning wild card game that they lost to the Rockies in 2018, and haven’t won a playoff game since the 2017 National League Championship Series against the Dodgers. Getting back into the postseason is already a significant accomplishment, but the goal, of course, is more than merely making a playoff appearance.

“We’ve grinded over a few years [to be] able to get to this point,” Dansby Swanson said. “To put together a full season of winning baseball, there’s been so much work.

“[We’re] wrapped up in figuring out ways to continue to get better and to continue winning baseball games and win meaningful baseball games.”

Not having Horton will make that more difficult, without question, but by winning on Saturday and securing that the wild card games will happen at Wrigley Field, they have given themselves an advantage of not having to travel after Sunday’s regular season finale.

“We’ve played really well at home this year,” Taillon said. “And I think the fans are a big part of that. Wrigley’s definitely one of the best home-field advantages in sports.”