For the first 4½ weeks of the season, Nico Hoerner
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put up star-level offensive numbers.The Chicago Cubs were rolling through two 10-game winning streaks in large part because of Hoerner’s .289/.366/.443 slash line, 129 weighted runs created plus (wRC+), 15 extra-base hits and 28 RBIs in 37 games. A chunk of that damage came with runners on base, situations in which Hoerner hit .283 with a .500 slugging percentage.
That version of the Cubs second baseman has disappeared since early May, coinciding with the team’s precipitous drop in the standings. Hoerner snapped an 0-for-18 streak Wednesday with a single in the Cubs’ seven-run second inning of an 8-6 victory over the Colorado Rockies to take the series. He finished the game 1-for-5 with a double play and a strikeout looking after coming into the night hitting .174 in his last 35 games.
Hoerner’s offensive woes have been one of the most confounding parts of the teamwide slump. His elite contact ability is a driving force behind his success. But a 50.8% ground-ball rate over this stretch is kneecapping Hoerner.
“I feel like I’ve usually produced pretty close to my expected stuff throughout my career,” he recently told the Tribune, “but even within that, when I’m walking a lot more than striking out, you think that would lead to signs of quality at-bats.
“But when production is not there, even with that, you’ve got to look at the quality of contact. It’s a huge deal, so making contact, sure, it’s a good thing, but what kind of contact are you making? I haven’t been making contact with authority.”
One of the biggest adjustments hitting coach Dustin Kelly is working with Hoerner on relates to his contact point. Where Hoerner is connecting his bat to the baseball keeps getting deeper and deeper into his swing, resulting in too many ground balls and limiting his ability to drive the ball.
Among the 165 qualified big-league hitters, Hoerner’s 34 wRC+, a measure of offensive value, since May 8 is sixth-worst in the majors — just ahead of teammate Dansby Swanson (31 wRC+).
“Some of that’s just ingrained with the type of hitter (Hoerner) is, and we’ve tried to push that contact point out front a little bit,” Kelly told the Tribune. “But sometimes that leads to some more swing decisions, and they’re committing a little bit earlier.
“So it’s the give and take of how much are we willing to push and then how much are we willing to just have a really good at-bat and see what happens, and that’s kind of where we’re at now.”
Kelly has seen signs in the last week of better swings, improved bat-path angles and some balls hit to the back side in the air a little more. The hope is it results in fewer ground balls and more hard contact.
While Hoerner has been the victim of a little bad luck — according to his .185 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) — during this rough stretch in the last 5½ weeks, the type of contact he has been making contributes to that.
“He’s pretty batted-ball dependent, and when he’s on the ground a lot, it can really go two ways in extremes,” Kelly said. “There’s times where a lot of those balls get through, and then there’s others where he goes through these stretches where nothing’s falling.”
As the hitting coaches work with Hoerner to adjust his contact point, a variety of factors can make it challenging to implement consistently when a swing is out of whack. Some of the adjustment becomes pitcher dependent, such as the shape of the pitches they throw. Ideally, Kelly said, Hoerner would make contact closer to the end of his stride foot, allowing the barrel to stay behind the ball and drive it in the air.
The Cubs have a HitTrax machine that shows Hoerner where his contact point is during cage work, then matches it up to his in-game swings to highlight the differences.
“So we monitor it for sure,” Kelly said, “but it can’t be just like a full sellout, like you’ve got to try and catch everything out in front. The shapes of the pitches nowadays are too unique and they’re too different to just guess right every time.”
Even some metrics that appear to be a positive trend can indicate a deeper issue. Hoerner typically doesn’t strike out much, but his 5.8% strikeout rate since this rough stretch began — below his 7.6% mark last year — hints at a potential underlying issue.
“A lot of times with guys that make so much contact like that, sometimes a little bit of swing-and-miss is actually better,” Kelly explained. “And in Nico’s best stretches, the strikeout rate has gone up a little bit, but the batted ball is more productive as well. So if he’s just up there making contact and not striking out, the quality of contact probably isn’t as good as what we would want it to be.”
The Cubs offense tends to be at its best when Hoerner is locked in. His typical consistency in hitting for average isn’t a strength of the rest of the lineup. In many ways, as Hoerner goes, so goes the Cubs’ offensive production.
“Our offense misses those hits, and obviously last year he was so good with guys in scoring position,” president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said. “He provides an element that the rest of the group doesn’t have as much, and when he’s not doing that, we feel the absence of that.”