Chicago Cubs: Craig Counsell lauds latest Cubs hero of the day

Righty Trent Thornton has been one of those unexpected fill-in heroes. On Friday, he delivered an especially noteworthy performance in a tie game against the Chicago White Sox at Rate Field, delivering 2 hitless shutout innings before the offense could put things away.

“We gotta talk about Thornton here tonight,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell insisted on telling reporters after his team’s 10-5 win over their crosstown rivals.

“We can’t ignore that tonight because that was a huge effort,” Counsell said. “You come in a tie game, first and second, nobody out. It’s not the ninth inning, so it doesn’t seem like a save, but that’s a save in a baseball game when you get out of that inning. Tons of emotion in that inning. Then you go out the next inning, basically face the top of the order, throw up a scoreless inning. That’s getting it done. That’s a big-time performance.”

The 32-year-old Thornton was signed by the Cubs this offseason to a minor league contract as a depth piece and part of a huge stockpiling of arms that now, after the string of injuries suffered by the staff, seems absolutely prescient.

A free agent gamble

Thornton had tore his left Achilles tendon while trying to cover first base with the Seattle Mariners last July and was coming into the 2026 season as a gamble of a free agent. Despite having a measure of success over the course of his 7-year major league career with the Mariners and previously the Toronto Blue Jays, the Achilles injury was a tough issue to look past. The Cubs front office, however, was happy to roll the dice on the spectacled hurler.

On May 6, Thornton was called up from Triple-A Iowa and has yet to allow an earned run in 4 games and 5 innings pitched. This latest outing against the White Sox places him firmly in the “next man up” Cubs class of 2026.

“It just feels like we’re talking about somebody different every night,” Counsell said back in April.

That quote still applies today.