Why Nico Hoerner Can't Hit for Even Doubles Power, and Whether That Can Change

[Matthew Trueblood]

During a transition segment on the radio home of the Chicago Cubs Monday afternoon, a few hosts had a good conversation about the team's second baseman and his power potential. The big question at issue: Can he find a way to hit for more power?

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports

It's no secret that Nico Hoerner has been a hit-over-power, speed-over-power, defense-over-power guy during his Cubs tenure. He's only managed 23 home runs in 1,736 career plate appearances, and if we're honest, that overstates the extent of the power he's displayed. Fourteen of those 23 homers (and 61 of his 109 total extra-base hits) have come at home, and anecdotally, when he does clear the wall, it tends to be narrowly, on warm days and/or ones on which the wind is blowing out.

A brief discussion between Laurence Holmes, Dan Bernstein, Matt Spiegel, and Danny Parkins centered on whether that could eventually change. Hoerner is sturdily built, and every so often, he takes a huge, aggressive swing that suggests he's trying to tap into more power. As the hosts noted, "more power" doesn't have to mean 20 home runs a year. Hoerner's swing seems more geared toward splitting gaps, and with his speed, merely doing that with moderate consistency seems like it should net him 40 doubles and triples a year. Alas, he only had 27 such hits in 2022, and 31 in 2023. So, is there more to be unlocked here?

Unfortunately, I strongly suspect that the answer is no. It's not just that Hoerner seems to prefer taking aim at the opposite field, or that he hits the ball on the ground somewhat more often than even doubles hitters usually do. It's also that, given how hard he's capable of hitting the ball, the league has sealed off its defensive weaknesses to hitters like him.

First, consider that Hoerner's 90th-percentile exit velocity this year is 101.2 miles per hour. Of the 283 hitters who have come to the plate at least 70 times this year, that ranks 238th. There are a number of good hitters down in his area of that leaderboard, but there aren't any power hitters there. That's before even accounting for the fact that Hoerner puts it on the ground fairly often. Other guys in his range in terms of 90th-percentile EV include Mauricio Dubón, Ceddanne Rafaela, Gsvin Lux, and Brice Turang.

What Hoerner does do well is hit line drives, and because he puts the ball in play so often, he can produce a huge quantity of them. Right now, he's averaging a launch angle just over 3 degrees on balls hit more than 95 miles per hour, which is a problem, but let's imagine that he can fix it. Even if he started hitting a large number of hard (85-100 MPH) line drives (launch angle 10-18 degrees), which he sort of already does, I'm not sure how well he would be rewarded for it. Why? Because we live in the Age of the Long Single.

Here are swarm charts showing actual and expected results by qualifying batters on batted balls matching the criteria above, back in 2016. I've highlighted three players with skill sets loosely correlating to Hoerner's, just to illustrate the potential value of the ability to hit firm, low liners and run a little bit.

Dustin Pedroia, José Ramírez, and Ian Kinsler all shared Hoerner's blend of speed and line-drive mentality, with great hand-eye coordination keeping their strikeout rates low. They plugged a lot of gaps and reaped a lot of doubles from their efforts.

That was back when teams were still learning the macro-level lessons to which Statcast data eventually gave them great insight. Nowadays, replicating those results is very difficult. Here's the same swarm chart for 2023 and 2024, as one oversized season, with Hoerner and another pair of comparable hitters highlighted.

Studying this, you might be tempted to note the large discrepancy between Hoerner's expected and actual averages on those batted balls, and to count him as unlucky. He's also getting fewer extra-base hits, even as a share of all hits, than his batted-ball data on these liners suggests. Alas, it's not luck. It's a combination of the league's evolution and Hoerner's inability to subvert it.

As those lessons from Statcast seeped into the water supply for teams, they adjusted their outfield positioning. Even the shallowest center fielders of 2024 play, on average, about as deep as the average center fielders of 2015 and 2016. The same things are happening in the corners. It's not quite a no-doubles approach, but teams have moved all their outfielders back (all else equal), with the idea of cutting off more would-be gappers and holding hitters to long singles.

Let's imagine, now, that Hoerner not only gets the ball off the ground more often, but also hits it a bit harder. Moving the sample of batted balls we're looking at from 85-100 MPH out to 90-105, here's the distribution of outcomes on low line drives since 2015, league-wide.

Defensively, the league isn't maximizing the out rates on those batted balls. They are, however, holding batters to singles on them better every year. This, remember, is basically the outer edge of Hoerner's reachable range. Even if he stretched and found more pop, he'd be moving out into a range within which extra-base hits are less common all the time.

His speed should allow Hoerner to force the issue and stretch the odd would-be single into a double, but it doesn't always work that way, because his lack of long fly-ball power allows teams to play him in such a way as to cut those line drives off sooner than they might against a batter like Christopher Morel. The league plays deeper than they would have a decade ago, even against a hitter like Hoerner, but they don't have to play as deep against Hoerner as against a true power threat, so they can still get to the ball within range of a strong throw to second base most of the time.

It's not impossible for Hoerner to evolve into a hitter with more power. I suspect, however, that it's functionally impossible for him to evolve into as good a hitter as he already is, with more power. Right now, his highest-quality contact--by far--comes to dead center and right-center. That's a result of how his swing works, and a lot of the great things about his profile (his contact skills and plate discipline, especially) are tied in with that manner of things. For as long as it remains true, Hoerner isn't going to rack up extra-base hits, because teams will have a fairly easy time holding him to singles based on the way he hits the ball and his tendency to hit it best to the big part of the park.

A change in approach that draws more of his best contact around toward left field would alter the balance of things. It would probably also mean more strikeouts, fewer walks, and little overall improvement. Though his body and his existing platform of skills makes it tantalizing to dream on his upside, the reality is that the current version of Hoerner is two things: a very good hitter, and probably the best one he'll ever be. The Cubs need a bit more from their lineup, but they should expect and endeavor to find their upgrades elsewhere.

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