Article: Don't Sleep on Nico Hoerner's Offensive Impact

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Cubs need at least one bat to bolster their lineup for 2024, and ideally, it would be someone who hits for power. Because of that, though, there's real risk of overlooking the upside of their current lineup, including a locked-in leadoff hitter extraordinaire.

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

There was nothing quiet, exactly, about Nico Hoerner's breakout campaign in 2023. He stole 43 bases and played sparkling defense at second base, racking up highlights along the way. Because of the shape of his batting profile, though, it can be easy to gloss over the value he delivers with that part of his game. After his second-half surge and in light of the granular data we can now glean about his performance, Hoerner belongs at the top of the lineup for 2024--and he'll be a difference-maker in that slot.

Even speed and aggressiveness as great as Hoerner's don't count for much if a player can't get on base or hit for real power, and through the middle of last season, Hoerner just wasn't doing enough of either. In fact, through the All-Star break last year, he was hitting just .271/.321/.376 for his career, and .275/.330/.382 for his career. That's adequate. That keeps you in the lineup, if you're fast and play great defense at a fairly important position, but it just doesn't make a lineup better. It doesn't actively put runs on the board, even paired with that speed and aggressiveness.

After the All-Star break, though, Hoerner was sensational. He batted .297/.377/.391 in the second half. A .377 OBP guy, in a league that averages a .325 mark, has ample value. Part of the improvement was thanks to a better batting average on balls in play, and as you can see, there was no sudden power jump. The BABIP was more of a modest increase than a spike, though, and it wasn't the result of mere luck. He had his approach better organized down the stretch.

Here's a TruMedia heat map of Hoerner's exit velocity on batted balls, by pitch location, split between the two halves.

Hoerner generated more hard contact in the first half, by going and getting the ball up and away from him. He was very good at shooting that pitch to right field. It had a low ceiling of isolated value, because Hoerner doesn't hit for the kind of power that leads to extra-base hits when stroking the ball the other way, even in his hot zones. In the second half, he focused more on crushing pitches in the middle of the zone, but that came at the price of some of those unique hits to the right side.

Here's the telling thing, though. Keep that heat map for exit velo in mind, and consult this map of his swing rate by location for the two halves.

Most hitters generate a lot of value by swinging at the ball down and in. That's a power hot spot for most guys. It's a place where you can do major damage, if you have a typical swing. Hoerner doesn't have one, though. As the first set of charts will attest, he's good at hitting the high pitch. He's not going to hit it hard enough to make it worth trying to lift it very much, but that's ok on pitches up in (or even above) the zone. His swing is geared for contact, not dingers. With his swing plane, he doesn't cover the pitch down and in all that well, but that's ok. He wised up in the second half and swung at that pitch less often. Instead, he raised his sights and hit more line drives. His Hard Hit rate and average launch angle were up in the second half, fueling his BABIP uptick.

On top of a more complete and nuanced approach, Hoerner has one trait that makes me believe he can sustain what we saw late in 2023: no one hits the league's toughest fastballs better, or at least more often. Some 366 hitters saw at least 100 fastballs with a vertical approach angle (VAA) of -4.5 degrees or higher in 2023. A flat VAA is one of the top things on every pitching coach's wish list lately. It signals deceptiveness, and that hop that makes it so hard to square up a really good heater. On average, hitters whiffed 33.2 percent of the time against those flat-VAA fastballs. Hoerner, by contrast, whiffed on just 5.2 percent of his swings against them. That was not only the lowest miss rate in baseball, but a full 1.8 percentage points better than Travis Jankowski, second-best. Luis Arraez was third, at 7.8 percent. Overall, Hoerner takes what is a very blue heat map for most hitters and splashes it with red.

Hoerner is a viciously tough out. He neutralizes the best, trendiest fastballs in baseball. He might never find more than 10-homer power, and he doesn't even have elite doubles power, but he's going to hit for average for at least the rest of his prime. Now that he's tightened his approach, he's also started walking more, and that, too, should continue. Pencil Hoerner into the leadoff spot for the next two or three years, and start your mental work on the Cubs lineup with No. 2.

Are you buying Hoerner as a dangerous leadoff man? Does that temper your desperation for another addition to the Cubs lineup? Let's discuss.

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[Bertz]

Where to hit Hoerner is a really tough question, and I think for me depends on who gets brought in to bolster the offense.  He's a contact guy and as you point out here is especially strong against top of zone fastballs.  I want him somewhere to help mitigate that weakness of someone else in the lineup.  For example Chris Morel gets eaten alive at the top of the zone, so for example something like a 5-6 in the lineup of Morel-Hoerner would for make a lot of sense.  If Wisdom and Morel are in the lineup on the same day you definitely want Hoerner somewhere in between them.

[Petrey10]

So we should hope for. Chapman signing then? That way we have two Hoeners