CINCINNATI — Trying to reduce the organization’s pitching deficit, the Chicago Cubs selected University of Mississippi right-hander Cade Townsend with the No. 23 pick in the 2026 MLB Draft, hoping his swing-and-miss stuff and the club’s infrastructure can put him on the fast track to Wrigley Field.With Saturday’s first-round pick, the Cubs displayed confidence in their ability to develop Townsend, 21, a draft-eligible sophomore from an SEC program that reached this year’s College World Series.Townsend posted a 6.35 ERA over 34 innings as a freshman swingman, and he dealt with a shoulder injury earlier this year, but he convinced the Cubs to invest in his future with a strong finish.Townsend notched 88 strikeouts in 64 innings, compiling a 3.94 ERA across 14 starts and fitting into a draft slot valued at nearly $4 million. He said he felt a strong connection when he met with the Cubs during last month’s MLB Draft Combine in Phoenix.“That’s what I was looking for — a good fit,” Townsend said on a video conference with reporters. “Didn’t care what the pick was. Didn’t care what the money was. I really just want a team that’s a family. Who’s going to help support me to get to the big leagues? Because at the end of the day, that’s the only thing that matters.”While that sounds like an abstract concept, Townsend was the subject of an in-depth scouting report from Cubs reliever Ryan Rolison, whose wife Lauren works with the Ole Miss athletic department, in the NIL space. Rolison himself was a first-round pick out of Mississippi in 2018, and he trained with Townsend during the past two offseasons in Oxford, Miss.Rolison shared some of his experiences, ups and downs with the Colorado Rockies, the challenges of coming back from injuries and the business side of the game. The lefty reliever whom the Cubs claimed off waivers in January is now one of the club’s success stories. Townsend was paying attention.“I was just blown away with the amount of knowledge that he had about what he was doing, his arsenal,” Rolison said. “Right off the bat, seeing how developed he was with his mindset as a freshman coming in, it was pretty impressive to hear the way he talked about the game.”Mississippi assistant pitching coach Joel Mangrum previously worked in pitching development with the Cleveland Guardians, an organization known throughout the baseball industry as a pitching factory.In that small world, Rolison pointed to Cubs teammate Drew Pomeranz as an example. Pomeranz, 37, is a left-handed pitcher who has credited the Cubs for extending his career and helping build him back up into a playoff reliever last year.“I know Pomeranz would probably hate me for saying this,” Rolison said, “but Pomeranz was one of my guys that I wanted to be growing up. He’s from Tennessee, close to my area, and then he went to Ole Miss and was a first-round pick. I was watching his big-league highlights when I was in high school. It’s kind of full circle.”Besieged by pitching injuries and working with an imbalanced farm system tilted toward hitting prospects, the Cubs have been resourceful. Even with a makeshift bullpen and an entire rotation on the injured list, the Cubs will go into the final day before the All-Star break in a playoff position.Still, the Cubs have acknowledged the need to put more resources into their pitching corps. Hunting for value on the waiver wire is always part of the job. The change of scenery sometimes works. Coaching up players never stops.But if this group of instructors and analysts is that good, you might as well give them some more raw material to work with and see if a frontline starter could be developed internally. As long as he stays healthy, Townsend will get that opportunity.“It’s something we hoped would happen, but we didn’t want to force it,” Cubs vice president of scouting Dan Kantrovitz said. “If you go into the draft forcing that, then you might miss a player who’s there unexpectedly,” he said. “No doubt, we hoped that we’d have access to the top-tier pitching talent.”The Cubs leaned into an organizational strength by selecting two left-handed-hitting college players in the second round: Texas A&M outfielder Caden Sorrell and Florida State first baseman Myles Bailey, who was taken at No. 75 with the compensation pick for free agent Kyle Tucker signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers.The Cubs also drafted two more college pitchers in the third and fourth rounds: Nebraska’s Carson Jasa, a 6-foot-7 right-hander, and Dylan Marionneaux out of Northwestern State.The draft will resume Sunday and run 20 rounds, giving the Cubs more chances to restock their farm system with young pitchers. But that is only a first step toward Wrigleyville. Developing Townsend will be a priority, a project that may reveal how far the organization has come in that area, or where it needs to catch up.“The spin is really my superpower,” Townsend said. “That’s what I tell everyone. I just have a weird, innate ability to spin the ball and make the ball move left or right. What I want to improve on is definitely fastball command, fastball execution, getting to throw my fastball more. It’s really understanding what I’m doing on the mound to get big-league hitters out.”Jul 12, 2026Connections: Sports EditionSpot the pattern. Connect the termsFind the hidden link between sports terms