Cubs' Nico Hoerner had a standout year — could 2026 be even better?
In the final weeks of the 2025 season, Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner didn’t quite shrug off the feat of being in the running for the batting title, but he approached the conversation with a broader context in mind.
“It's not what I go into every day valuing,” Hoerner said of batting average, noting that there are better statistics to measure a hitter’s success. “But it's a big part of how I get on base, just getting hits, and the ability to move runners and score runners.”
Hoerner’s standout 2025 season included a .297 batting average and second-place finish for the National League batting title, behind Trea Turner (.304). It was Hoerner’s best such mark since becoming a lineup regular in 2022. And, to use a more comprehensive, comparative stat, his 114 OPS+ was the best of his career.
That offensive production, paired with gold-glove defense even earned him a down-ballot NL MVP vote and 19th-place finish for the award. It’s no wonder potential trade partners have inquired about Hoerner, as he enters the final year of his contract. It’s also obvious why the Cubs seem to prefer to keep him, barring an especially robust offer.
“Nico's great at things that other people think they're good at – and they're not as good at it,” manager Craig Counsell said last month when asked about Hoerner’s intangibles. “And I'm not talking about just players; I'm just talking about people. When you say, show up every day and complete every rep, that is Nico. Every rep is completed perfectly, that's who Nico is.”
Because of Hoerner’s performance, it’s easy to forget that he had a late ramp-up to last season because of an offseason forearm surgery. Another step forward from him this year, with a normal offseason ahead, could help bolster the offense, especially with the likely absence of current free agent Kyle Tucker.
The push and pull for Hoerner has long been a desire to add power, but without sacrificing the contact that’s been a strength for his whole career.
Even after Hoerner’s successful injury rehab had him ready for the Cubs’ domestic opener last season – he missed the Tokyo Series trip in order to achieve that goal – that balance was still on Hoerner’s mind.
“It’s a fine line when you’re playing every day,” he said in June. “You want to continue to improve but also embrace the skills that make you who you are and get you to this place and make you a big-league starter because that’s a hard thing to achieve.”
Just 40 of Hoerner’s 178 hits last season were for extra bases. But the consistency he offered was invaluable in a lineup that had sluggers like Tucker, Seiya Suzuki, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Michael Busch to provide the long ball.
By mid-September, Hoerner and Turner were the only qualified hitters in the NL with batting averages above .300. (The American League had six qualified hitters finish the year hitting .300 or better, led by Aaron Judge’s .331 batting average).
“It sometimes takes you a while to realize that nobody else is doing that,” Counsell said then. “That was a mark that the best 10 hitters did, or the best 15 hitters did. And now, you realize in the National League, there's [two] guys doing it. So it's just a signal of how hard it is to do.
“And that's what it looks like. Nico feels like he's getting just hits non-stop, and he's still only hitting .301. But it's felt like, ‘Oh my gosh, he's piling up hits.’ It's hard to hit .300 in Major League Baseball, period.”
Hoerner was infamously even better in clutch situations. He posted a .371 batting average with runners in scoring position, which trailed only the Blue Jays’ Bo Bichette (.381).
Hoerner was just as consistent, however, in his continued quest for improvement. So, it should have been predictable that he would return to that theme, even in conversations about his elite batting average.
“Obviously there's things around the edges that I can still do a lot better that provide more value to our team, as far as getting on base and hitting for power, and those are things I definitely always want to continue to improve on,” he said in late September. “But [batting average] is a big part of my game.”