Chasing History 90 Feet at a Time: Nico Hoerner's Unique Role and Skillset in Cubs Offense

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

As you might have noticed, Nico Hoerner doesn't have a home run yet in 2025. In fact, he hasn't come especially close. He's only hit one ball more than 370 feet in the air this season, and that was to dead center at Wrigley Field last week—aided by a wind gusting out to center field. It didn't truly threaten to leave the park, and it needed a push even to force Derek Hill onto the warning track. Hill made the catch, looking rather unimpressed by the time it settled into his glove. This is the best Hoerner can hit a ball, and it barely topped 100 miles per hour, and he didn't get around on it.

Only two other balls hit by Hoerner have pushed an outfielder as deep as the track this season. This one really did almost leave the park.

But that was to the part of the park where Wrigley is friendlier to hitters than any other park in the league. There's no big-league venue in which that ball is gone; it left his bat at a good-not-great 98 MPH. Here's the last instance, the least impressive of the bunch.

Even here, we're not so much marveling at Hoerner's warning track power as being forcefully reminded that left-center field at Citi Field is a short porch, just like that of Wrigley Field and Dodger Stadium. Hoerner has 146 batted balls 349 feet or shorter, and only nine that traveled 350 feet or more. Only Jacob Wilson Wilson, Steven Kwan, Luis Arraez, Bo Bichette and Jarren Duran have more of the former, and only Wilson and Arraez match him by having a mere nine of the latter. Hoerner stands firmly among the least powerful hitters in baseball.

This is also a year with a pretty dead baseball. On average, the drag coefficient on the ball is up, dampening offense league-wide and taking flight distance off fly balls. It's harder to clear the fences than it has been, arguably, at any time since the dawn of Statcast in 2015.

We have to seriously consider the question, then: What if Hoerner doesn't hit a home run all season? It's possible—and because he's a good hitter, except for his staggering dearth of pop, it would put him in position to make history.

Thanks to batting sixth (most often) for one of the best offenses in the league, Hoerner enters play Monday night with 20 RBIs. That puts him on pace for 69 of them on the season, which would not only be the most by a player without a home run since 1987, but shatter that milestone. No one has amassed more than 53 RBIs in a season without clearing the fence (or even circling the bases on an inside-the-parker) since Ozzie Smith's famous 0-dinger, 75-ribbie campaign in the Rabbit Ball year of 1987. Given the myriad ways in which the game has changed since then, that record has felt utterly untouchable—but Hoerner is in position to challenge it.

You can go all the way back to 1947 (before which baseball is functionally unrecognizable), and Smith's miniature miracle year is the only instance of a player driving in more than 56 runs without hitting a homer. The next fistful of entrants on the 77-year leaderboard are:

• Billy Goodman, 1949: 56
• Willie Randolph, 1991: 54
• Ozzie Smith, 1986: 54
• Jason Kendall, 2005: 53
• Matty Alou, 1968: 52
• Goodman, 1955: 52
• Dick Groat, 1965: 52
• Bip Roberts, 1996: 52

Firstly, I think that in honor of his 1986 and 1987 seasons, Smith should get a belated Commissioner's Historic Achievement Award, like the ones Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani received from Rob Manfred a couple years ago. Secondly, though, this puts into perspective what kind of history Hoerner is chasing. He's in a unique position, and handling it in a historic way.

It's an egg race, this kind of record chase. One homer would ruin it, in a wonderful way. Maybe Hoerner will make an adjustment at some point this year and get back to the handful of homers he hits in most seasons. With the ball flying like a lead balloon and Hoerner already a hair past his power peak (based not only on his age, but the hand injury from last year that is probably still affecting him), though, it's just possible we'll see one of the great achievements in the history of punch-and-judy hitters this year. Hoerner is a perfect little cog in this lineup, a cleanup man's assistant and second leadoff man rolled into one. It would surely be fun for Cubs fans, too, if he could bump the Hall of Fame Cardinals shortstop from this page of the obscure record book.

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