Mark Grote

And I sort of evolved out of that in the slug era, like especially watching the Cubs of 2016, where it was all about hitting the ball over the wall.

But I'm kind of getting back to my roots a little bit when we think about Nico and Mark Grace, who I just loved watching that man hit baseballs.

Loved Tony Gwynn, loved all those guys, the Wade Boggs's, the Tony Gwynn's of the world.

And as Layla said, Nico's kind of a throwback.

Well, and Tony Gwynn, you know, not just famous for hitting it to the 5.5 hole, but just the career strikeout numbers were wildly low.

And when you consider that compared to what happens in baseball now, it's night and day.

It's funny you bring up 2016 Cubs because that was the era where then we heard a couple years later Theo Epstein say the offense broke.

Yes.

And then we've been trying to find it ever since.

It's come in flashes, but we're still trying to see that.

We saw it in the first half of last year.

And that still is a question for me that remains not entirely answered.

But Nico Horner not being on this team doesn't solve that.

And so when you see him hit the way he did last year, where he was a consistent presence, where he was batting 297, the defense was there.

You saw how Dansby Swanson and Nico helped win you ball games with that defense playing at an elite level.

It makes sense as to why they wanted to make this move.

Is it too aggressive to say this and to believe that this year could be the best offensive team since the World Series team?

Because that's the way I'm looking at it.

2017 was also a very good offensive team.

Okay.