Last night, the Cubs opted for the infield Nico Hoerner, ESPN’s Jeff Passan and Jesse Rogers report (Twitter link) This sets the stage for guests who are not on the list Eric Sogard to make the season’s opening cast, add Passan and Rogers. Sogard’s contract will need to be formally selected from the list of 40 men before Opening Day.
Passan and Rogers suggest that the Cubs’ decision not to set up camp with Hoerner is fueled by a desire to gain another year of team control over the 23-year-old. Hoerner has 1,021 days of MLB service time, so the Cubs would need to keep him under age for 36 days to prevent him from reaching two full years of service in 2021. Hoerner is currently manageable until 2025, so the downgrade could keep him in Chicago until after the 2026 season.
If Hoerner’s choice is really motivated by seniority issues, it’s a bit of a bizarre decision. The Cubs are coming out of a year in which they won the National Central League and are part of a group of four teams with a plausible chance of claiming the division in 2021. Accepting a sub-ideal second base situation for more than a month this season . maintaining Hoerner’s contractual rights for 2026 would not seem like a worthwhile trade-off.
There is a case to be made so that the Lions are better off, strictly from the field point of view, when resorting to a SogardDavid Bote platoon at the cornerstone over Hoerner. Although Hoerner flew for the majors after being selected in the first round of the 2018 draft, he has not yet been productive there. In 208 MLB plate appearances, Stanford’s product reached just 0.247 / 0.309 / 0.333. He didn’t hit a single home run in 126 plate appearances last year, hitting a 0.259 without a punch.
Of course, Sogard is coming out of a dark season, having reached 0.209 / 0.281 / 0.278 with just one home run in 128 plate appearances with the Brewers. Sogard was very good in 2019, but he has never approached the hit percentage of 0.457 or 13 homeers he hit that year before, so it didn’t look like he would be able to sustain that level of production. Hoerner and Sogard did well in spring training.