You Can’t Stop Nico Hoerner From Doubling Down the Line

[Davy Andrews]

He who defends everything defends nothing, and Nico Hoerner's ability to spray the ball all over the field allows him to rack up hits to the pull side.

Image courtesy of © Jeff Curry-Imagn Images

He who defends everything defends nothing, and Nico Hoerner's ability to spray the ball all over the field allows him to rack up hits to the pull side.

I love Nico Hoerner’s Statcast page. It’s a land of contrasts, as polarized as our stupid country. Any slider that has to do with fielding the ball or making contact with it is so red that it hurts your eyes. Any slider that relates to hitting or throwing the ball hard is blue enough to make the ghost of Harry Caray weep. Not all of this is Hoerner’s fault. The small amount of power he had was sapped by a flexor tendon injury that required surgery once the season ended. From 2023 to 2024, Hoerner’s percentile ranks in hard-hit rate, average exit velocity, and barrel rate all got cut in half. What I really love, though, is below. It’s not polarized at all. It’s perfectly balanced, harmonious even. Nico Hoerner really puts the spray in spray chart.

There’s a conspicuous lack of deep fly balls and magenta-colored home runs here, but Horner really does spray the ball all around the ballpark. This season, he pulled the ball 34% of the time, hit it straightaway 37% of the time, and went to the opposite field 29% of the time. That made him one of just 12 qualified players whose rates to all three fields were within 4.5 percentage points of 33.3%. However, there is one tendency that jumps out very clearly on the spray chart. Nearly all of Horner’s doubles are ripped down the left-field line, and nearly all of them are fairly shallow. I was curious about that cluster of blue dots blanketing the line. How is it that Hoerner possesses a rare ability to spray the ball all over the field, but also hits so many of his extra-base hits to the exact same, extreme spray angle?

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