(670 The Score) In dealing All-Star closer to the White Sox last Friday, the Cubs’ key return was second baseman Nick Madrigal, the No. 4 overall pick in the 2018 amateur draft who was having a strong season on the other side of town before suffering a season-ending hamstring injury in June.
Madrigal, 24, was appealing to the Cubs in large part because of his hit tool and high contact rate. Madrigal has hit .317 with a .764 OPS in 83 career MLB games and struck out in just 7.4% of his plate appearances, a sharp contrast to the high-strikeout Cubs teams of the past several years.
But what Madrigal brings on the contact front, he lacks in the power department. He has just two homers in a combined half-season of action or so. Given that Nico Hoerner – who has only three homers in 107 career MLB games – is the leading candidate to play shortstop for the rebuilding Cubs, it begs a question.
Can the middle infield pairing give the Cubs what they need to be successful with a near complete lack of power? In the view of president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, the answer is yes.
“Yeah, for sure,” Hoyer said on the Bernstein & Rahimi Show when asked if Madrigal and Hoerner can co-exist. “I think Nick is a really good second baseman. When you have a guy that has hit almost .320 in his big league career to date, I think he brings a skill set that’s so hard to find in today’s game. And frankly, a skill set that we have really lacked as a group. I think that we struggle with batting average, we struggle with contact. He does a lot of things that we really like, and he’s a high-energy player.
“Nico has more versatility defensively than Nick with his athleticism. But I think it’s really nice to have two high-contact, high-energy players on the roster going forward. They’re two nice pieces to build around in a game where contact is becoming harder and harder to find. I think those guys can really complement each other well. There is some positional overlap, but I do think Nico’s versatility kind of eliminates that as a problem.”
Hoerner, 24, has hit .275 with a .699 OPS across parts of three MLB seasons. His strikeout rate is 16.1% for his career.