A really smart drunk once said, “Write what you know.” So, with that in mind, my first piece here at Friends With Fantasy Benefits is about something I watched happened first-hand – the precipitous collapse of Rhys Hoskins’ 2019 season.
I will take a moment to come clean with you all, I have a rooting interest in my boy Rhys. I live in Philly and when the Phillies play well my life is generally more enjoyable.
The personnel changes the Phillies went through before play started last season were meant to add punch to a solidly mediocre lineup. By adding Bryce Harper, J.T. Realmuto, Jean Segura, and Andrew McCutchen to a team that already featured above-average OBP players such as Hoskins and Cesar Hernandez, the Phils were going to take a step forward in 2019 and challenge not only for a playoff spot but potentially the NL East title. Other things that were going to happen in 2019 included Aaron Nola improving on a career year (didn’t happen), Zach Eflin, Nick Pivetta, and Vincent Velasquez battling it out for the second spot in the rotation (hahaha!), and every pitcher on the staff over the age of 30 not getting injured (uhh, nope!).
As I dry the tears from my eyes after that brief synopsis, I want to focus specifically on the offense of the Phillies 3rd-year 1B and how to evaluate him going forward.
It was a tale of two…uh…parts of the season for Hoskins. From March until the end of July, he was very good. “The Slump” as it shall heretofore be referred, started with an 0-4 showing on July 31st and lasted until the end of the year. His stat line during that stretch was a dismal .162/.303/.320 with 6 HR, 17 RBI, and a pathetic 65 wRC+. He straight up sucked for the last two months of the season and watching Gabe Kapler trot him out there night after night was painful for everyone involved.
But here’s the rub: his final stat line on the season was a somewhat more respectable .226/.364/.454 with 29 HRs, 86 Runs, 85 RBI and was second in the league with 116 walks. From March to “The Slump” Hoskins had a 138 wRC+, good for 19th in MLB among plays with at least 300 PAs at the time. Ahead of the likes of Jose Altuve, Juan Soto, and Charlie Blackmon. So what happened?
Hoskins has shown in the past he is a streaky player. When he burst on the scene late in the 2017 season he famously (or maybe not if you live outside of the Philly area) broke the records for the fastest rookie to hit 9, 10 and 11 home runs as well as tying a Phillie record by hitting five home runs in five consecutive days. He finished the 2017 season with 18 home runs in only 50 games, a pace of 58 home runs over a 162 game season.
The pendulum swings one way, it must swing back.
Is Hoskins a 58-home run hitter? That would be really great I doubt it. He’s also not an 18 home run hitter (his pace during “The Slump”), especially not in Citizen’s Bank Park, I don’t care what ball they’re playing with. The truth is somewhere in between. So can it just be regression to the mean that made him truly terribly at the back end of 2019? That is also a big fat “no”. His batted ball profile tells us a lot about what works for him and what doesn’t.
Like a lot of sluggers, Rhys is a dead-pull hitter. So, when he was crushing, it’s no surprise he was pulling 53% of his batted balls and his HR/FB rate was nearly 17%. During “The Slump”, these numbers fell to 36% and 9%, respectively.
However, this biggest issue with his batted balls from 2019 could be his affinity for launching them at 24 degrees or higher. Hoskins is no doubt a launch-angle-era hitter and under the management of Gabe Kapler, his average launch angle (LA) was able to, uh, flourish…I guess? If you visit the Statcast Leaderboards and sort by Avg LA(°), you will see my man at the top of the list among qualified hitters for the last two seasons. Is that good? Well, no. Because as his average LA has gone up, his barrel%, batting average, expected batting average, slugging%, and pretty much every other important hitting statistic has gone down. He lead the league in fly ball% (50.4%) which could be a good thing if you are barrelling more than 9% of those balls, which he wasn’t. His high infield fly-ball% (15.3%) helped drop his BABAIP from .303 at the end of July to .267 at the end of the season (it was .200 during “The Slump”) There is such a thing as too much launch angle, and Rhys Hoskins has found it.
So, that begs the question, can he be fixed? The Phillies are now a ship being guided by “Binder” Joe Girardi so it’s tough to know exactly what to expect from new management. However, I do know from watching the Gabe Kapler era very closely, almost nobody excelled under his tutelage so there’s really only one place to go and that’s up. If he can level out his swing even just bit and return to a 10%+ barrel rate he will get back to his 2018 numbers, which were very solid even without the juiced ball. If he can add to those skills, 40 HRs is not out of the question, and he would finally be reaching the potentially many thought he had when he broke all those records back in 2017.
From a fantasy perspective, where you draft Hoskins has a lot to do with your league settings. He is much more valuable in an OBP league than a league using batting average. I would rank him as the number four 1B behind Bellinger, Freeman, and Rizzo in an OBP league. Even in a standard BA league, I rank him top 10 at the position. You can call it a homer pick if you want but when you think about his tools, the team context, and the home park, Hoskins has some pretty plum deployment.
The best part about him is, from what I can tell, he’s pretty low on everyone else’s lists. Based on the #2EarlyMocks, Hoskins is getting faded this draft season most likely due to such a horrible final two months of 2019. He could provide solid value if you’ve potentially waited until the 5th or 6th round to snag him.
I’ve waited until the end to provide this disclaimer. There is an outside chance Hoskins’ 2020 season could be torpedoed by the Phillies first-round pick in the 2017 entry draft, Alec Bohm. He cruised through three levels of the minors last season and depending on how 3B shakes out for the team, he could challenge for time at first if Rhys can’t get it together. It seems a little more likely Bohm gets dealt for some pitching help considering the Phils are in, to quote GM Matt Klentak, “win-now mode”, but there is a chance something could happen there. Or maybe Hoskins gets moved if he gets off to a hot start, you just never know!
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