Pete Crow-Armstrong Sums Up Why the Chicago Cubs Need to Extend Nico Hoerner

Going back to October, it was an expectation that the Chicago Cubs would SERIOUSLY engage infielder Nico Hoerner in extension negotiations. From there, I suppose you can never assume a deal will definitely get done, but I’ll tell you, I was pretty optimistic.

Now, here we are, with Spring Training officially starting this week, and no extension has happened for Hoerner and the Cubs. Team president Jed Hoyer has said he doesn’t want to negotiate during Spring Training anymore, so unless he’s going to break his brand new rule right away, there is little time left to get a deal done.

And, to be sure, the Cubs absolutely need to get an extension done with Hoerner, sooner rather than later.

This is a 25-year-old player who is getting better at the plate, has shown elite defense at shortstop and second base, could almost certainly play anywhere you asked him, and you’re definitely going to want to keep around for more than his three remaining years of team control. This is also a guy who, when the Cubs had the change to sign a big-time shortstop in free agency, was perfectly happy to risk decreasing his own future financial earnings by moving back to second base. Because he just wants to win.

If you needed it summed up further from there, let me offer this quote from top Cubs prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong, who tells you EXACTLY why the Cubs need to get this done:

Crow-Armstrong, himself a gamer that I hope we get to see with the Cubs for a good long time, knows a leader when he sees one. He can tell immediately that Hoerner is the type of player that he wants to look to for guidance, for leadership, and for a sense of how you play the game.

If Hoerner is already having that kind of impact on the top prospect in the organization, how could the Cubs justify not getting an extension done? How could they explain to future young stars that they don’t lock down other young stars when they do things as well as Hoerner has? Maybe there were good and reasonable idiosyncratic explanations for why the previous core never got extended. But I see no reason to not get it done with Hoerner right now. He deserves it. He provides future value. And the message it sends THROUGHOUT the organization would be a very, very positive one.

Get. It. Done.