(Photo credit: Dan Hamilton-Imagn Images)

With a month left in the regular season, the Chicago Cubs still have a chance to catch the Milwaukee Brewers for the National League Central crown, but they need to start piling up victories.

Now is the time to do it, with 18 consecutive games against teams with records under .500, starting Friday night when the Cubs visit the Colorado Rockies for a three-game series.

The Cubs will send Cade Horton (8-4, 2.88 ERA) to the mound, while fellow right-hander German Marquez (3-11, 5.67) is expected to be activated from the injured list to make his first start since July 20.

Chicago heads to Denver after being swept in three games at San Francisco, concluding with a 4-3 loss on Thursday. The second-place Cubs sit 6 1/2 games behind Milwaukee in the Central as they enter the final series of a nine-game road trip.

The Cubs swept a home series from the MLB-worst Rockies at the end of May. Chicago scored just nine runs in the series but held Colorado to five. Horton and Marquez squared off in the middle game of that set, with both giving up two runs in six innings of a 4-3, 11-inning victory for the Cubs. Neither figured into the decision.

Friday night will mark the 19th appearance of Horton's debut season and will cap what has been a strong August for him. Horton is 4-1 with an 0.72 ERA in the month and has become a leading candidate for NL Rookie of the Year after tossing six shutout innings at the Los Angeles Angels on Saturday in a 12-1 win.

Horton has dropped his ERA nearly two runs (4.80 to 2.88) over his last nine starts.

'I think it just goes back to my process and continuing to get better at my process and never really being satisfied,' Horton told reporters after the Saturday victory.

Marquez will try to pick up where he left off before he landed on the IL with right-biceps tendinitis. In the 11 starts prior to his injury, he had posted a 3.55 ERA, which started with his outing against the Philadelphia Phillies on May 22.

That was a huge improvement over his first nine outings, in which he gave up 39 runs in 40 innings.

Marquez is 1-3 with a 6.26 ERA in nine career starts against the Cubs. Reversing that trend could help lead him to a feel-good conclusion to 2025.

'If he gets these next five starts to end the season, he'll end up with about 125 innings,' Colorado pitching coach Darryl Scott said Wednesday. 'It would be nice if he could do that. I think that's important for him, personally, to show that he's healthy.'

Friday will begin a nine-game homestand for the 38-96 Rockies, their longest of the season. A winning record on the homestand would allow Colorado to reach 42 wins and remove any chance they would finish with the most losses in the modern era. The Chicago White Sox set the record by going 41-121 in 2024.

Colorado has lost six of its past seven games, all but one of those on the road, but has an 11-9 home record in the second half of the season.

--Field Level Media