The Cubs second baseman is in the middle of one of the worst slumps of his career. A year removed from a .297/.345/.394 slash line, the cornerstone player’s numbers currently sit at .237/.317/.332 for the 2026 season. For a player who has some of the best bat-to-ball skills in the big leagues, Hoerner’s slump is all the more puzzling. What exactly is going on?
Nico Hoerner is still one of the talented players on the Chicago Cubs’ roster. He’s one of the best fielders in all of baseball, and continues to produce jaw-dropping defensive plays in the middle of his current slump. On the offensive side, he’s got a 7.2% strikeout rate, 2nd in the majors behind Luis Arraez. His whiff rate is in the 98th percentile, and he’s still squaring up baseballs at an elite rate. He’s walking more than he’s striking out for the first time in his career. Even his expected batting average sits at .294 for the season. In essence, he’s still the same player that he’s been since he broke into the starting lineup in 2022, but the on-field outcomes aren’t what we’ve come to expect from the second baseman.
Is it simply that he’s getting unlucky as his xBA would suggest? Well, yes, that’s part of it. For instance – while he’s on track to post his worst wOBA of his career since the COVID-shortened 2020 season when he was mainly a bench player, his xwOBA is the highest that it’s ever been in his eight seasons (.331). His batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is also the lowest it’s been since his career began in 2019, sitting at .242 through June 15th. These numbers do indicate that Hoerner is getting unlucky on his batted balls and he’s surely due for some positive regression. And yet, the regression hasn’t come quite yet.
It’s important to note that Hoerner hasn’t struggled all season. In fact, through the first two months of the season, he looked like an improved version of himself. He carried a .291/.370/.449 slash line into May and had a .361 wOBA with a wRC+ that was 32% better than league average. Even by his standards, he was tearing the cover off the ball and his bat seemed to have more pop than in years past.
Since the start of May, however, his numbers have plummeted. His slash line since May 1st looks like that of a completely different player (.192/.273/.237). His wOBA is down by over 100 points and his wRC+ sits at 49. Although strangely enough, he’s walking twice as much as he’s striking out since the start of May, compared to the first two months of the season when he struck out more than he walked. So what happened when the calendar flipped to May?
Is Hoerner being pitched differently? Well, not necessarily. Against all pitchers, he’s seeing slightly less offspeed pitches (8% vs. 12% in the first two months) and slightly more breaking balls (33% vs. 28%) in his plate appearances. Yet he’s at his best as a hitter against breaking stuff this season, so this wouldn’t be the cause behind his slump. Left-handed pitchers have begun throwing him more breaking balls (31% compared to 22%) and less fastballs (52% compared to 62%). Although, this is another weird trend because his wOBA is 80 points higher against left-handed breaking balls compared to fastballs. With right-handed pitching, we see the trend of less offspeed pitches and more breaking balls – another puzzling trend given his .359 wOBA against breaking stuff compared to a .114 wOBA against offspeed pitches.
So what gives? What happened with Nico Hoerner after the first two months of the 2026 season? My belief is that this has something to do with getting hit in the head by a Matt Waldron pitch on April 29th. Hoerner shook off the hit-by-pitch pretty easily, laughing at his dugout and waving off the trainers – but I can’t help but wonder if the 90 mph fastball left a mental mark. I’ll be the first one to admit that it’s near impossible to determine a player’s mental fitness based on statistics alone, but without direct access to the player, it’s the only thing we have to go on.
Take a look at the images above. On the left, we have Nico Hoerner’s wOBA up to April 29th, when he was hit in the head. On the right, we see his wOBA from April 30th – June 16th. Notice anything different? He was dominating pitches inside through the first two months of the season. After getting hit, Hoerner is a well below average hitter on inside pitches; particularly on pitches up and in. He’s still mashing low and inside pitches, but there’s a big difference mentally when a pitch is coming at your head instead of your knees. I’m not saying that he’s scared of getting hit again; I’m suggesting that he may be indecisive on inside pitches, leading to a lack of confidence at the plate that further compounds a slump.
Speaking of confidence, one statistic in particular stuck out to me. Prior to the hit by pitch, Hoerner had a .393 wOBA on middle-middle fastballs. Afterwards, he carried a .064 wOBA into June 16th. Such a drastic dip on pitches that should be considered “batting practice” for a player with Hoerner’s bat-to-ball skills suggests that he’s either not seeing the ball well, or he’s lacking confidence at the plate. Either way, both variables could be a direct result of the Waldron fastball.
The reason that I suspect that the hit by pitch is having at least some impact on Hoerner’s slump (if not being largely responsible for it) is because his metrics on outer third pitches have mostly stayed the same throughout the year. The drop in production has come from pitches that are inside or down the middle. There’s an infinite amount of reasons that can cause a player to slump throughout the season, and every hitter is going to experience a rough patch. But for a player of Hoerner’s ability, such a prolonged slump deserves to be questioned. Did the hit-by-pitch leave more of a mental mark than a physical one? Only Hoerner can answer that question, but the numbers seem to suggest that this may be the case.
All statistics and metrics were pulled from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, and Baseball Savant unless otherwise noted
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