Phillies: Making sense of Rhys Hoskins’ streaky start

After a slow spring training, Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Rhys Hoskins found his stroke as soon as the games started to count. He opened the new season on a six-game hitting streak, batting .417 (10-for-24) with a home run, six doubles and three multi-hit games, as the Phillies swept the Braves and took two of three from the Mets.

Hoskins then fell into a 2-for-26 funk over his next seven games, with a solo homer as his only extra-base hit in that stretch. But, he’s on a tear over his last nine games, hitting .289 (11-for-38) with six homers, one double, nine RBI and four multi-hit games.

Phillies 1B Rhys Hoskins is off to a streaky start to his 2021 season.

Hoskins followed up his two-homer, five-RBI day against the Rockies at Coors Field last Saturday with another monster game Monday night. He again went deep twice, producing the Phillies’ only runs in a 2-1 win over the Cardinals at Busch Stadium. Hoskins now leads the majors with eight home runs and owns a 145 OPS+, 45 percent above league average.

When you look at Hoskins’ overall numbers early this season, a few things stand out — both good and bad. There’s plenty of reason to be excited, as we’ve seen how good Rhys can be when he’s locked in — like right now. But for any young, streaky hitter, long-term consistency is key, and Hoskins is still searching for it.

We’ll get into all of that and try to make sense of Hoskins’ polarizing trends that fall onto both ends of the statistical spectrum.

Hoskins has played in 22 games so far in 2021, so let’s dive into his numbers this year compared to where he was at the same time in 2020.

Rhys Hoskins, 2020 vs. 2021, through 22 games played

The good…

2020: .211 BA/.324 SLG/.741 OPS/1 HR/5 2B/7 RBI
2021: .261 BA/.614 SLG/.907 OPS/8 HR/7 2B/14 RBI

Rhys didn’t hit his first home run of 2020 until his 17th game and needed 29 games to reach six last year. This year, his first homer came in his sixth game and it took him only 20 games to get to six. His batting average is up 50 points through the same number of games, and he’s made huge jumps in both slugging percentage (290 points) — almost double what it was last year through 22 games — and OPS (166 points), all great signs early on.

These numbers are excellent, and he’s hitting the ball with more authority (more on that later), something the Phillies and their fans are really happy to see. At the same time, some other important areas of Hoskins’ game have regressed.

The bad…

2020: .417 OBP/22 K/21 BB
2021: .293 OBP/31 K/4 BB

At this point last year, Hoskins had almost the same number of walks as he did strikeouts. This year, he’s basically stopped walking altogether while striking out more, leading to a brutal 31/4 K/BB ratio. Hoskins has seven multi-strikeout games, including five games with three strikeouts, and zero multi-walk games. In 2020, it took him TWO games to draw four walks (he had seven through just three games), while it took him 20 games this season.

The number of strikeouts isn’t nearly as concerning as the severe lack of walks, which, for a traditionally patient hitter like Hoskins, has led to an unfathomable 124-point drop in OBP through the 22-game mark. To put that into perspective, Hoskins’ .417 OBP at this point last year would rank 14th-best among qualifiers this year, while his .293 mark ranks tied-for-116th.

Now that you’ve seen what Rhys’ production looks like on the surface, let’s dive into how he got there and what direction he’s trending by looking at some advanced data from Statcast.

We are less than one full month into the 2021 season, so we are analyzing a small sample size.

The goal here is not to accept each trend as exactly what is going to happen the rest of the way, but to find out which current trends are sustainable over the 162-game marathon.

Do not worry too much about Rhys Hoskins‘ low walk rate. It’s such an outlier right now compared to his year-to-year averages, it will eventually balance itself out. If he continues to hit this well, pitchers are going to start pitching around him, and the walks will naturally pile up. He won’t have a sub-.300 OBP at the end of the season, but his hard-hit/barrel/exit velocity improvements look relatively sustainable.

It comes down to this: if Hoskins continues to hit home runs and doubles and drive in runs like this more consistently — with a higher batting average, slugging percentage, OPS and OPS+ — that’s worth a small drop in walks and on-base percentage, and a few more strikeouts.

That is not even a question, that is an answer.

Hoskins, 28, is playing in his fifth big-league season, but it is important to remember that he did not debut until August of his age-24 season, and 2018 and 2019 were his only full seasons.

He is still coming into his own, but judging by his streaky — yet encouraging — start to his 2021 campaign, Hoskins has the potential to turn a hot couple of weeks into a breakthrough year.