Craig Counsell didn’t sound interested in rewriting Nico Hoerner after the Cubs second baseman’s 2026 season went sideways.
One year after coming close to an NL batting title and posting the best single-season numbers of his MLB career, Hoerner took a clear step back. He hit .263 with an 84 OPS+, both his lowest marks since the shortened 2020 season, and his 2.1 bWAR dropped to about a third of the 6.2 he produced in 2025. The result was a season that raised more questions than answers at the plate.
“This is the thing with Nico,” Craig Counsell said at the end of the year. “This is the thing that’s hard to understand. When you put the ball in play as much as Nico, luck affects him more than any other player.”
The numbers back up that view. Hoerner’s xBA sat at .297, more than 30 points higher than his actual batting average.
He also landed in the 99th percentile in K%, the 98th in squared-up %, and the 97th in whiff rate. Those numbers were nearly a mirror of his breakout 2025, when he slashed .297/.345/.394 and drove the Cubs offense.
“Nico is one of the trickiest offensive players to evaluate,” Counsell said.“He’s an outlier in this league with how he creates offense. Even the statistics around the expected stuff and the actual stuff with Nico, I question them at times.”
That’s what makes Hoerner such a strange case. The process hardly changed, but the production did. His BABIP dipped from .313 in 2025 to .275 this year, and that kind of swing can pull his results all over the place.
For the Cubs, the answer is not to tinker recklessly. Hoerner’s contact-heavy, low-whiff profile still has value, especially on a team whose recent offensive identity has leaned so heavily on slugging. If anything, adding more contact-oriented bats around him could give the lineup a different shape.
There’s obvious frustration in watching Hoerner’s line flatten out after such a strong 2025, but the Cubs don’t appear to have a simple fix. And with the extension he signed last spring running through 2032, there’s no reason for panic over where this season ended up.
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