At Cubs Convention this year Nico Hoerner made a comment that he was looking forward running a lot again this season and for the first two weeks of the season it really looked like that was coming to pass. Hoerner had nine stolen bases through April 17, good for the MLB lead at one point — but since then, he’s only added one stolen base on two attempts.
It’s not just Nico, the Cubs as a team appear to have shifted their running philosophy mid-stream as we were all discussing in Monday night’s game thread and it’s worth taking a closer look at why.