This hidden detail makes Nico Hoerner’s Gold Glove even more impressive

The Chicago Cubs led all MLB teams with three Gold Glove Award winners this season, with Nico Hoerner joining left fielder Ian Happ and center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong as players bringing home hardware for their defensive efforts.

The win marked Happ's fourth consecutive win and Crow-Armstrong's first, while Hoerner, coming off an injury-impacted 2024, earned his second Gold Glove Award - joining Ryne Sandberg as the only Cubs second basemen to win the award multiple times in their careers.

Nico Hoerner was elite despite arm strength issues for much of the year

How Hoerner did it, though, is especially impressive: he couldn't even throw during his pregame routine until the halfway point of the season.

“Not only not being able to throw in any of his work, knowing that if he had to let one go, it was going to hurt, and knowing that he didn’t have the arm strength that he normally has,” Happ said when asked about Hoerner's defensive work this season.

The 28-year-old former first-rounder put together a wildly impressive all-around season this year, flirting with a batting title, appearing in 156 games and piling up a career-high 6.1 bWAR - which led all Cubs players, marking the second time in three years he's led the club and the highest bWAR total by any Cub since Javier Baez in 2019.

“[They] felt like another offseason after it is really when things start to get synced up,” Hoerner said. “So I’m excited to get into a throwing program, start up in a couple of weeks, and just really have a full time to get that under myself and not just be able to be a second baseman, but really be the best athlete that I can be.”

Hoerner expects to get his offseason throwing program started in the coming weeks and, after talking with Cubs pitchers who have rehabbed arm injuries, expects to really be back to 100 percent heading into next season. The fact he played as well as he did while still working through his recovery just adds another reason to the ever-growing list explaining why the Cubs need to approach him with a new contract extension this offseason.

Chicago has tens of millions of dollars coming off the books at the conclusion of the 2026 campaign, aligned to coincide with the expiration of the CBA. While ownership and the front office may want to see how talks go between the league and MLBPA next winter, locking up Hoerner, given his all-around skillset, should be at the top of the team's to-do list this offseason.