Cubs (Martin) vs Phillies (Nola): 4/14/26, 5:40pm

[Bertz]

"Don't use anecdotes" says the guy who didn't bother to bring anything to the table.

Since the start of '23, Nico Hoerner on ground balls has a .271 BA and a .251 wOBA.  On balls in the air he's at .363 and .382. 

Like it's obvious you're getting increasingly desperate to have people argue with you but even so this is a reach.

[Jason Ross]

7 hours ago, Stratos said:

I said he should stop trying to hit HR because he's bad at it and would have a higher avg with a lower launch angle.

Your reply was to show his BA and xBA.  I'm not sure what your point was with those stats.  It's a statistical fact that hitting more flyballs leads to a lower BA, but more HR.  But Nico's flyballs leave the ballpark at a very low rate.  He was 2nd worst in MLB last year in HR per FB%.  The last 3 years he's been 4th worst, just 0.3% better than Luis Arraez.

Using anecdotal evidence and a sample size of 1 game or 2 weeks worth of games isn't good evidence.  4.3% of Nico's flyballs have been HR over the last 3 years, which is horrible, and his career rate is similar.

If he keeps hitting more FB and hitting leadoff yeah he'll likely reach a career high in HR just out of sheer volume, but at what cost?

He's been on fire this year so yeah it's a good argument that he shouldn't change a thing.  But he was also on fire the last month of last season and hit significantly lower rate of FB.

I have tried to explain this to you multiple times. If he were losing base hits due to his hitting the ball "in the air" then we'd see this reflected in xBA. Expected BA takes into account EV and launch angle. Meaning, if his xBA was sitting in the mid .200's this year, we'd be seeing someone who was losing hits. His xBA last year was .292. They're identical. 

I brought up an anecdote because it's pretty good timing for you to be complaining about him "trying to hit HR's" only for him, you know, like 3 hours later hitting one. It's quite coincidental, and frankly, pretty funny.

And let's really look at your complaint about "balls in the air". So far this year he's hitting 10% less ground balls, 8% more line drives and 4% more fly balls. His xwOBA and xSLG are currently his best ever. He also has his highest pull flyball rate. 

Lets go back to that xBA thing because it goes directly to complaining about this. He's currently pulling fly balls at the his highest% of his career. in 2025 here is the difference between pull% in the air and just balls in the air:
Pull: BA: .484 xBA: .394, wOBA: 889
Total: BA: .261, xBA: .252, wOBA: .426

Which is why what Hoerner is doing right now matters. Hoerner over the last three years has a pullair% that has gone from 14.5%, to 17.5%, to 22.5% this year. So sure, his HR% was lower before, but he's turning on more things and hitting the ball less on the ground and hitting more line drives. Remember, you're worried about him losing "singles" but league data says xBA goes up when you pull the ball in the air. Even if we eliminate all home runs, xBA is better on balls in the air pulL% by .40 points league wide. 

Line drives, which he's doing 8% more of this year has similar results. Data goes way up on ld% vsd gb%. xBA in 2025 on line drives were .619 vs .249. So even if you're worried he's going to lose a few hits with added fly balls, he will add far more by his LD% going up, and he's likely to hit a few more home runs. It's all going to balance out and then some if all of these numbers keep up. 

At what cost? Right now he's the best version of him ever. So what in the world are we whining about? It's just inventing "maybes" and "what ifs" to be worried about. It's pretty silly.

[Stratos]

5 hours ago, Bertz said:

"Don't use anecdotes" says the guy who didn't bother to bring anything to the table.

I literally went through stats of Nico's very low HR/FB% right before I made the point about anecdotes, so you're wrong.

5 hours ago, Bertz said:

Since the start of '23, Nico Hoerner on ground balls has a .271 BA and a .251 wOBA.  On balls in the air he's at .363 and .382.

There's a difference between a line-drive over the INF head and a flyball, both which i assume count as "balls in the air".  Trying to hit groundballs or flyballs is IMO a bad idea for Nico, he seems to excel when he hits liners all over the field, especially down the 3b line.  The angle of certain swings of Nico looks like he's trying to drive the ball out of the park, but it just fails so often.

5 hours ago, Bertz said:

Like it's obvious you're getting increasingly desperate to have people argue with you but even so this is a reach.

This is a discussion forum.  We're having a debate.  You've shown countless times that you're not capable of having one without using insults and becoming angry and toxic, and I call you out on it when it's directed at me because I'm not going to take anyone's horsefeathers.

You obviously don't like this so now you have this new habit of also butting into discussions I'm having with other posters and pulling the same BS.  Clearly I'm not the one getting desperate to pick a fight.

[Bertz]

23 hours ago, Stratos said:

IMO he needs to keep the ball out of the air.

.

19 minutes ago, Stratos said:

There's a difference between a line-drive over the INF head and a flyball, both which i assume count as "balls in the air".  Trying to hit groundballs or flyballs is IMO a bad idea for Nico

 

[javy knows my name]

Hey guys, I hope you're sitting down.

Stratos has a terrible take

[Stratos]

10 hours ago, Bertz said:

."IMO he needs to keep the ball out of the air. "

"There's a difference between a line-drive over the INF head and a flyball, both which i assume count as "balls in the air".  Trying to hit groundballs or flyballs is IMO a bad idea for Nico"

You're playing semantic games.  I also said this:

Quote

He needs to either spray liners all over the field and/or pull the ball down the line for XBH/HR.  If he wants HR he needs to hit like Isaac Paredes and that's probably not the best idea at Wrigley.

For Nico IMO flyballs bad, groundballs bad, line-drives good.  I assume he never or rarely tries to hit grounders, but he seems to be trying to hit flyballs.  In his career his flyballs turn into HR less than 5% of the time, which is a terrible rate for an MLB hitter, and gap doubles or doubles over the OF's head are rare for him according to his statcast charts.

[Stratos]

17 hours ago, Jason Ross said:

I have tried to explain this to you multiple times. If he were losing base hits due to his hitting the ball "in the air" then we'd see this reflected in xBA. Expected BA takes into account EV and launch angle. Meaning, if his xBA was sitting in the mid .200's this year, we'd be seeing someone who was losing hits. His xBA last year was .292. They're identical. 

I'm arguing that if he changed his launch angle when he tries to hit a FB (which he doesn't always try to do based on his differing swing path depending on the pitch) and sacrificed flyballs for more line-drives then his BA would go up.  The highest BA/xBA among FB, LD, and GB is line-drives, so the data supports my hypothesis.  His LD% has gone up this year too along with his BA and xBA.

17 hours ago, Jason Ross said:

I brought up an anecdote because it's pretty good timing for you to be complaining about him "trying to hit HR's" only for him, you know, like 3 hours later hitting one. It's quite coincidental, and frankly, pretty funny.

Yes it's a funny coincidence but it doesn't prove any point against my argument, which is what you also seemed to be trying to use it for.

17 hours ago, Jason Ross said:

And let's really look at your complaint about "balls in the air". So far this year he's hitting 10% less ground balls, 8% more line drives and 4% more fly balls. His xwOBA and xSLG are currently his best ever. He also has his highest pull flyball rate. 

Lets go back to that xBA thing because it goes directly to complaining about this. He's currently pulling fly balls at the his highest% of his career. in 2025 here is the difference between pull% in the air and just balls in the air:
Pull: BA: .484 xBA: .394, wOBA: 889
Total: BA: .261, xBA: .252, wOBA: .426

Which is why what Hoerner is doing right now matters. Hoerner over the last three years has a pullair% that has gone from 14.5%, to 17.5%, to 22.5% this year. So sure, his HR% was lower before, but he's turning on more things and hitting the ball less on the ground and hitting more line drives. Remember, you're worried about him losing "singles" but league data says xBA goes up when you pull the ball in the air. Even if we eliminate all home runs, xBA is better on balls in the air pulL% by .40 points league wide. 

Line drives, which he's doing 8% more of this year has similar results. Data goes way up on ld% vsd gb%. xBA in 2025 on line drives were .619 vs .249. So even if you're worried he's going to lose a few hits with added fly balls, he will add far more by his LD% going up, and he's likely to hit a few more home runs. It's all going to balance out and then some if all of these numbers keep up. 

At what cost? Right now he's the best version of him ever. So what in the world are we whining about? It's just inventing "maybes" and "what ifs" to be worried about. It's pretty silly.

I agree that when he hits FB he should be trying to pull them as much as possible, as I already mentioned when I said if he wants to hit more HR he should try to pull them down the line like Isaac Paredes, who like Nico also lacks bat speed/EV/power.

As you know, i'm not specifically concerned about him avoiding all "balls in the air" (i didn't mean that in the statcast definition of the word, which includes line-drives), i'm concerned about flyballs specifically, especially ones not pulled down the down.  Line-drives are good.  Flyballs in the direction of the leftfielder (where he seems to hit them a lot) or maybe even the LF-CF gap I don't think will produce optimal results because he doesn't hit the ball hard enough.  He's not going to turn into Alex Bregman.

Nico's HR/FB this year is more than twice as high as last year and significantly higher than his career rate.  It's unlikely he maintains that though I hope he does.  Might depend on the Wrigley winds and how much he can improve pulling the ball.  It just sucks when less than 5% of his career flyballs haven't resulted in a HR and most seem to die in the glove of an OF.  We've seen him try to hit more HR before and it hasn't worked.

[Bertz]

This all sounds something closer to reasonable until you check and see (as Jason already pointed out) it's what has already happened?

- Groundball rate down 12% from.his 3-year average 

- Line Drive rate up 7.5%

- Flyball rate up 4.5%

So what in the world was the initial complaint about?  Is this some sort of Pam Beesly "make improvements but accept no tradeoffs" thing?

[Jason Ross]

3 hours ago, Bertz said:

This all sounds something closer to reasonable until you check and see (as Jason already pointed out) it's what has already happened?

- Groundball rate down 12% from.his 3-year average 

- Line Drive rate up 7.5%

- Flyball rate up 4.5%

So what in the world was the initial complaint about?  Is this some sort of Pam Beesly "make improvements but accept no tradeoffs" thing?

Bingo. He's made definable and noticeable changes in hit hit profile. He's added some launch angle, and it so far has resulted in more line drives and flyballs. Because the LA change, it's something that we can trace back to a reason; it does not appear random. The flyballs may conceivably lower his batting average and yes, he may lose a single or a few that way. 

To use last year's sample size, he hit 549 balls in play (I subbed out all PA's that resulted in some sort of baseball that did not land in the field of play. HR', K's, BBs, sacs, HBPs...you get the picture). Using his new numbers that would have resulted in (roughly, I'm doing some quick napkin rounding):

GB's: 181 ground balls
FB's: 209 fly balls
LD: 157 line drives

*Note this sample is two balls in play short because of rounding but it's not going to really effect the outcome, so don't @me when someone counts this as 547. I know!

Using 2025 league xBA on those results it would have resulted in the following numbers of hits. This does not differentiate between singles, doubles, triples, whatever...but it is quick napkin outcomes:

GBs: 45 hits
FBs: 37 hits (I also subtracted HR's from league xBA here for this to be fair)
LDs: 97 hits

This quick, napkin math results in 179 hits on ball in play using this quick data. Obviously this isn't entirely scientific, there are lots of other factors in play (ev, pull%, does this change his approach?) but it's not really supposed to be a scientific experiment. It's just a quick thought experiment to ballpark us. Any error isn't likely to cause egregiously different outcomes than this napkin math. Adding back in the seven home runs, he would have been at 186 hits. In 2025 Nico Hoerner recorded 178 hits. So even if someone wants to +/- 10 the amount of hits, Hoerner is right there, and that's without adding a single home run to the tally of a guy hitting the ball in the air more often. 

To recap: the expected amount of hits Hoerner would lose using this approach is... seemingly none. It appears he would have had more non-home run hits based on league expected batting average. And this assumes he wouldn't hit any more home runs, which is probably unfair.