Nico Hoerner shares what he admires most about watching Cubs teammate Seiya Suzuki

(670 The Score) A catalyst for the Cubs' surging offense has been slugger Seiya Suzuki, who has opened his third MLB season in strong form. Of course, that isn’t a surprise at all to teammate Nico Hoerner.

Hoerner has always believed in Suzuki’s abilities – even as he struggled at times in his first two big league seasons – and the results have followed thanks to a dedicated work ethic and training program.

“It’s always been in there,” Hoerner said of Suzuki on the Parkins & Spiegel Show on Tuesday. “Even in the past two years where he’s produced at a high level, I think there's always kind of been an understanding from our group and from him that there’s more there. You’re starting to see hints of that – more than hints. But he’s got an incredibly strong lower half. Like, his legs are so strong, the way his hips work, the force he generates from the ground, it’s pretty impressive. He does some movement stuff that’s very different than what we grew up doing in the states. It’s just really interesting to play with players from different places and see how they train. There’s so many different ways to do it.

“I mean, the ability to start early, control your lower half. He does a lot of training with slow work, slow flips or slow batting practice, and the ability to control more time, more spaces is more challenging than just doing a really fast machine or, like, rapid challenging stuff where the real challenge is often times being able to control things at a slower pace, and the body awareness to do it.”

Suzuki is hitting .289 with two home runs and 12 RBIs in 10 games this season. After struggling through much of the 2023 season, Suzuki posted a slash line of .356./414/.672 (1.086 OPS) over the final 47 games of the campaign, and he has built on that early in 2024.

The Cubs play the Padres on Tuesday night in the second game of their series in San Diego.