Nico Hoerner is not Starlin Castro. But the fear exists that when this offseason is over, he’ll be something of a vanguard in some new era for the Cubs. Like Castro was.
Calling it a fear is probably unfair to Hoerner. It makes it sound like he’s underwhelming, when really he’d just be the remnant, were that fear realized. The leftover. The latecomer. Nothing wrong with him, but a symbol of the change that happened. And evidently someone the Cubs are willing to (or willing to pay to) build around, to some extent. Like Castro was.
So if the Cubs do build around Hoerner, what are they getting? What’s his ceiling? What’s his floor? And how close to either is he?
We would hope 2020 was the floor.
It was a bad short season for Hoerner at the plate. The .222 average understates how rough it was. The .259 slugging percentage doesn’t understate it. Neither does the 63 wRC+. And yet he was a positive-WAR player. His defense, by FanGraphs’ way of measuring it, was worth 3.1 runs compared to the average at mostly second base, enough to buoy his WAR to a third of a win. Baseball Reference’s sabermetric fielding section puts Hoerner at six runs above average, bumping his WAR up to nearly a full win. If he maintains that defense, that’s not nothing. His bat should theoretically rebound, perhaps to FanGraphs’ Steamer projection of a 95 wRC+, close to league average. Which, again, for a middle infielder (or a center fielder, at times?) isn’t nothing. It’s enough that, even with some defensive regression, Hoerner would be worth about two wins over replacement. Is that a ton? Not exactly, but for a 24-year-old, which Hoerner will be at season’s end, it’s solid. It isn’t bad. It’s pretty good. Of course, that’s a big leap at the plate. But it’s the median expectation for a player of Hoerner’s history. The Cubs don’t need to suddenly fix their development system for major league talent. They just need it to perform averagely to get these results with this one player.
The bottom line is that if the Cubs end up trying to build around Hoerner, or at least putting him in place while they figure out everything else (like they did with Castro), it could be worse. And either way, it’s not his fault. He’s a fine player. He doesn’t deserve the disappointment potentially headed his way.
Oof.
