Nico Hoerner Ends the Dog Days of Summer Needing A Walk

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It's been a weird season for Chicago Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner. He came out hot. So hot that early MVP discussion began to swirl as he ended April at a .291/.370/.449 line with a 130 wRC+ and seven stolen bases. In addition to an uptick in his modest power (.157 ISO for the month), he was walking more (8.9 percent) while keeping his strikeout rate characteristically low. Throw in some casually elite defense and you have, objectively, one of the best players the National League has to offer.

Then, he hit a wall. In May, Hoerner's batted ball luck plummeted (.217 BABIP), and everything else came along with it. His wRC+ fell to less than half of the season's first month (59). He walked more than we're accustomed to seeing, at 11.1 percent, but virtually nothing else happened to maximize the value of an increase in patience. Those trends continued on into June, where his wRC+ sat at just 62 with the walk aspect also disappearing as Hoerner tried to hit his way out of his struggles.

It's the "hit his way out of his struggles" component that we're most interested in, because Hoerner has largely recovered since bottoming out in May & June. He slashed .301/.320/.376 in July and .295/.325/.419 in August, with his work in the latter month getting him back over the above-average side of the wRC+ threshold (105). The production isn't in question, but the fact is that he's become increasingly aggressive as the season has worn on in an effort to stave off that early-to-mid-summer swoon:

As the calendar flipped over to July, Hoerner (apparently) decided that the best way for him to get out of the struggle was to start swinging at as much as he could. His 55.4 percent swing rate in July ranked 21st in the league and was his highest mark in an individual month since September of 2024. While he's come back down a bit on the overall hacks, the underlying element of freely swinging at pitches both inside and outside the zone has not.

Hoerner has remained absurdly aggressive at the plate, leading to walk rates of just 3.1 and 3.5 percent in July and August. Thus far in September (23 plate appearances), he hasn't recorded a single walk. In terms of raw count, we're looking at 185 second-half plate appearances and five walks on the stat sheet.

It's not that Hoerner needs to walk to be successful. His walk rate generally lingers between six and seven percent, with his chase rate generally ranking among the bottom-third of qualified hitters. However, it's also proven to be an effective supplement within his game. In Hoerner's best month this season, he walked 8.9 percent of the time. In his best month last year, he was around six. He doesn't need to do it a lot, but the occasional bout of patience would allow him to use his baserunning prowess more frequently than relying purely on contact skills.

At the same time, there's a bit of a paradox at play. In September of 2024, he walked 3.1 percent of the time but wRC+'d a gaudy 145. In 2023, his top month (April) featured a wRC+ of 121 but a walk rate of just 5.5 percent. So, again, we're not talking about a player that absolutely has to walk in order to be successful.

The idea is simply that the occasional free pass can be an effective supplement for a player like Hoerner. The batted ball luck is going to go through stretches where it dries up; we saw that earlier this spring and summer. But a keen eye (in addition to his defense) allowed Hoerner to maintain value throughout a brutal stretch before that eye eventually led him back into the favor of the batted ball gods. It's a tool for the back pocket, and as the postseason creeps nearer, it may behoove Hoerner to flex that tool once or twice in a while, just to make sure it's still functional.