DENVER -- Nico Hoerner has already been exchanging text messages with Nick Madrigal. The infielders have known each other since their youth baseball days, and they can now look forward to being in the same Cubs lineup come 2022.

"Obviously, I wish we were both healthy," Hoerner said, "and playing up the middle together right now. He's just a great competitor."

Hoerner spoke at Coors Field shortly after going through a pregame workout, consisting of running and agility drills and a round of catch to test out his injured right side. Madrigal, meanwhile, is currently recovering from season-ending surgery to repair a proximal tear of right hamstring.

Hoerner (10-day injured list) is aiming to be back for the Cubs before the end of this season, while Madrigal (60-day IL) should be unrestricted by Spring Training. Count manager David Ross among those dreaming on having their contact-based bats in his lineup.

"It makes it hard on the other team," Ross said. "I go back to my catching days and how tough it is when you're a catcher and you can't get that guy to strike out. The swing and miss. Those are pesky at-bats. Those two guys have proven that their eye-hand, bat-to-ball skills are really impressive."

Hoerner cracked a smile when asked about that aspect that both he and Madrigal -- acquired from the White Sox as part of the deal that sent closer Craig Kimbrel to the South Siders on Friday -- can bring to the Cubs.

"When you talk contact, he's a whole other level. I'm a 'contact hitter,'" said Hoerner, who made air quotes with his fingers for emphasis. "But when you actually dive into it, he's the best, right? There's no one that puts the bat on the ball as well as him."

Among MLB hitters with at least 150 plate appearances this season, the 24-year-old Madrigal ranks first in swinging-strike rate (3.7 percent), contact rate (91.8 percent) and contact rate in the zone (98.6 percent). Hoerner, 24, leads current Cubs hitters in swinging-strike rate (8.8 percent) and contact rate (81.6 percent).

Hoerner said he first played alongside Madrigal when they were 11 years old. They teamed up again as part of Team USA in their teenage years and played together in tournaments in Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. They played against one another in college -- Hoerner at Stanford and Madrigal at Oregon State -- before each being picked by opposing Chicago teams in the first round of the 2018 MLB Draft.

"It's someone I have a ton of respect for," said Hoerner, who said he is willing to move off second base if that is where Madrigal stays for the Cubs. "[He's] someone who does a lot of the things you can't measure well in baseball.

"It's such an era of quantifying everything, which there's obviously value in, but he just understands the ins and outs of baseball so well, and has kind of always been a captain on the field, just the way he moves around and talks to people.

"That's an infectious thing to have, especially when you talk about creating culture with a different group of people. That's the kind of person you want around."

Steele coming soon
The Cubs sent lefty Justin Steele to Triple-A Iowa last month to give him a chance to stretch out as a starter. The goal was to get Steele to a point where Chicago could evaluate him in that role later in the season.

That step could be coming "sooner rather than later," Ross noted on Thursday.

Without going into specifics, Ross said the Cubs have a plan for Steele to join the Cubs' rotation in the near future. The 26-year-old lefty has posted a 0.87 ERA for Iowa in five starts, including striking out eight over five strong innings on Wednesday.

One possibility for the Cubs would be to use a six-man rotation, which would be a natural way to ease up on Adbert Alzolay's workload over the past two months.

"We will be creative as possible," Ross said. "I think there is a willingness for everybody to continue to make starts, and we'll move some things around and make some adjustments as we go."

Worth noting
• In the fourth inning of Wednesday's 3-2 win, Cubs left fielder Joneshwy Fargas reeled in a deep fly ball from Elias Díaz and then made a pinpoint, one-hop throw to third baseman Patrick Wisdom. That led to a double play that nabbed Ryan McMahon, who tagged up at second and tried to advance on the play.

"I thought that was a game-changing play," Ross said on Thursday morning. "It probably saved the game for us -- that throw from left."

• Willson Contreras entered Thursday ranked first in the Majors in innings caught (752), but Ross plans on finding more spots to give the heavily-used backstop breaks down the stretch. The manager noted, for example, that Contreras would be out of the lineup on Friday against the White Sox.

Quotable
"He's someone who just has always played at a high level. I feel like people questioned when he was 11 if he'd be good, and in high school, because he was smaller. And then they said the same thing in college and he was the fourth overall pick, right? And has played well at the Major League level already and has a lot more to achieve." -- Hoerner, on Madrigal