PHILADELPHIA — A Phillies slugger committed 51 errors in his first six seasons playing first base in the majors. He also hit 148 home runs in his first 2,887 plate appearances.
A different Phillies slugger committed 32 errors in his first six seasons playing first base. He also hit 148 home runs in his first 2,887 plate appearances.
The first slugger was Jim Thome.
The second slugger is Rhys Hoskins.
This matters in this moment because most of Philadelphia would be delighted to see Hoskins run out of town. They’d like ol’ Hoss to get traded for something like a mid-level starting pitcher who’d go .500 with a 4.50 ERA for the next two or three seasons.
Why? Because Hoskins went 0 for 13 with five strikeouts in the final three losses to the Astros in the World Series.
Talk about recency bias. But hey, you’ve got to blame somebody, right?
Any talk of trading Hoskins is lunacy. Hoskins plays first base because he can’t catch, and he’d be the designated hitter and Darick Hall would be the first baseman next season if Dave Dombrowski hadn’t wasted $100 million on Nick Castellanos, and Hoskins didn’t sign Castellanos, so he shouldn’t be punished for a bad move.
Also, if your team needs Gold Glove defense at first base to win, then your team is misconstructed.
Hoskins is what he is: a very good hitter and a magnificent value. What’s more, Bryce Harper himself said Hoskins is the captain of the most popular Phillies team since 1993. He’s the face and the voice of the Phillies at charity events, PSAs, press conferences, and in all moments of team crisis, mainly because Harper doesn’t want to be.
You want to tick off Harper, the brains behind the rebuild?
You might’ve forgotten, but Harper knows: Hoskins can send it.
Meaningful bombs
Hoskins hit 30 homers in 2022. He shared the playoff lead with six more homers in the postseason, and they were meaningful bombs. He also had 12 RBIs, which placed him third.
Granted, he hit .159 in the postseason, but the Astros had the best pitching in the American League, by a mile; their team ERA of 2.90 was 12% better than the Yankees’ 3.30, and their 134 home runs allowed were 15% better than the Yankees’ 157. Their team ERA in the playoffs was 2.29 despite allowing 13 homers in 13 games — a per-game rate (1.0) that still tied them for second best among the playoff teams.
Thome hit .213 with four homers and 10 RBIs in his first trip to the playoffs, and his Cleveland team also lost the World Series in six games. That was Thome’s fifth year in the majors. This was Hoskins’ sixth.
Both were a bargain early in their careers.
Hoskins cost the Phillies $7.7 million in 2022, and 2023 is his last year of arbitration, so he probably won’t cost them more than $13 million. He’s the Phillies’ most dangerous right-handed bat, considering that J.T. Realmuto has averaged fewer than 18 homers in his seven full seasons (excluding COVID-2020) and Castellanos has averaged just over 20 homers in his eight full seasons.
Hoskins has averaged 30 home runs in his four full seasons, and he’s done it in lineups that, before this season, featured Maikel Franco, Odúbel Herrera, Roman Quinn, and Scott Kingery.
Thome hit in lineups that featured Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez, Kenny Lofton, Omar Vizquel, Eddie Murray, Paul Sorrento, Carlos Baerga, Sandy Alomar, David Justice, Matt Williams, and Travis Fryman.
Misused
Maybe it’s just me.
Maybe the Hoskins hate isn’t as intense as I perceive it to be. Maybe I’m making too much of the boos that greeted him in Game 3 of the NLCS, despite having hit the most earth-shaking, bat-spike home run in Citizens Bank Park history in Game 3 of the NLDS. He would proceed to rip two crucial homers in Game 4 of the NLCS, but the boos returned in the World Series, nevertheless.
That’s Philly for ya.
Do Hoskins’ early returns mean that he’ll wind up with 612 home runs and a plaque in Cooperstown, like Thome? No.
But to assume that Hoskins’ OPS falling from .864 to .794 in 2022 indicates regression is foolish. It’s more an indication of continual mismanagement of Hoskins.
Hoskins is a natural No. 4 hitter, but he’s been second in the lineup most often in his career. His OPS as a cleanup hitter in 2019, when he regularly hit behind Bryce Harper, was .872, and he hit 27 homers in that spot that season. His career OPS of .913 hitting fourth is 108 points higher than his career OPS of .805 hitting second.
So, why does Hoskins hit second so often? Because the team has no choice. He’s a selective hitter — he was No. 2 in the majors in pitches seen per plate appearance, at 4.30 — and the Phillies haven’t had a viable No. 2 hitter since Shane Victorino, and that was 10 years ago. So, it falls to Hoskins.
Also, the situation this season was unique.
Hoskins only had 79 RBIs despite hitting 30 home runs. Why?
Because not only did he regularly hit No. 2 in the lineup, where RBIs are hard to come by, but the guy hitting No. 1, Kyle Schwarber, led the majors with 200 strikeouts. Furthermore, Schwarber’s on-base percentage of .323 didn’t reflect him actually being on base, since 46 of Schwarber’s 126 hits were home runs, and home runs, of course, clear the bases.
Finally, Hoskins hit .292 with runners in scoring position, which was 28 points higher than in any previous full season.
Fun fact: RISP was Hoskins’ weakest category for years: .219 in 2019, .206 in 2020, .232 in 2021. All things considered, Hoskins actually became a better hitter in 2022.
And why on earth would you trade away a modestly priced, 29-year-old power hitter ... who’s improving?
