Jaxon Wiggins last pitched on April 4 and then was scratched from his next start at Triple-A. The organization was supposedly taking it slow with Wiggins, who was also slowly guided through the 2025 season. However, ever since Jed Hoyer initially gave an update on the Cubs’ top pitching prospect you knew something was wrong.
We’re less than a week away from June, and Wiggins remains in Arizona, seemingly making little progress in the Cubs’ spring training facility. The 24-year-old pitcher was suffering from elbow inflammation in April, when he was first shut down this season. Now, seven weeks later, Wiggins is throwing off the mound, but he doesn’t appear to be close to game action.
Hoyer had a rather vague update on Wiggins earlier this week, which doesn’t exude much confidence that Wiggins will be a factor any time soon.
Not ideal. Maybe it was premature to expect Wiggins to come up and help the 2026 Cubs, but it also wasn’t too far-fetched to think the right-handed pitcher could have been an option down the stretch. Now you just hope he stays healthy.
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The hype around Jaxon Wiggins has been building since last year, and although the right-hander reached Triple-A in 2025, fans shouldn’t be holding their collective breath on his call-up anytime soon.
Wiggins, 24, was taken 68th overall in the 2023 MLB Draft and entered the 2026 season as a consensus top-100 prospect, ranked as high as 58th in MLB Pipeline’s list. He’s the top pitching prospect in the Cubs’ farm system, and given that he’s at Triple-A Iowa, it’s easy to see why fans are clamoring for him to join the big-league team. However, the organization has made it clear that they won’t rush Wiggins to the majors as he continues his development in the minors.
For starters, Wiggins has only thrown a total of 145.2 innings after making his pro debut in 2024. Although Wiggins has put up some incredible strikeout numbers, including a 31.0 K% and 2.19 ERA during his breakout 2025 campaign, he’s also dealt with control issues. The righty walked 36 batters in 78 innings of work between Double-A and Triple-A in 2025.
Through two starts with the Iowa Cubs so far in 2026, Wiggins has struggled to find the strike zone. He’s thrown a total of eight innings, and he’s walked five batters. He was scheduled to start on Friday at Triple-A, but that is no longer the case, according to Iowa Cubs beat reporter Tommy Birch.
Does that mean the Cubs are actually bringing him up? Again, I wouldn’t bet on it.
Wiggins has plenty of growth to make as a pitcher, and while you may be tempted to compare his timeline with Horton’s, Horton was far more polished as a prospect last year, when the Cubs called him up in May.
