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.

Thanks to the pandemic-shortened schedule and a season-ending September elbow injury, Hoskins played in only 41 games in 2020. He’s already more than halfway there this season, which makes comparing the following numbers more effective than if we were comparing totals from a 162-game season, because the sample sizes are more similar.

Rhys Hoskins, 2020 season (41 games) vs. 2021 season (22 games)

The good…

Hard-hit percentage is up: 42.6% → 56.1%*
Barrel percentage is up: 14.8% → 19.3%* (Top 7% of League)
Average exit velocity is up: 89.8 mph → 93.1 mph* (Top 10% of League)
Weak contact percentage is down: 3.7% → 1.8%

*Best marks of career

If you’ve watched Hoskins hit this season, especially over the last week, it’s easy to see that he’s making solid contact and driving the ball with authority quite often. His Statcast numbers back up the eye test. Hoskins’ hard-hit percentage is up 13.5 percent and his barrel percentage is up 4.5 percent in 2021, leading to a healthy jump in his average exit velocity as well.

Hoskins is posting career-best marks in all three categories, and he’s Top-10 in the majors in both barrels per plate appearance percentage and barrels per batted ball event percentage. His hard-hit rate has increased by almost 14 percent while his weak contact rate has almost been chopped in half, down from 3.7 to 1.8 percent. All encouraging trends as we head into May.

Rhys is producing these numbers while his launch angle has decreased from 24.8 to 19.9 percent, a considerable difference for a guy whose launch angle percentage has been above 22 percent every year from 2018-2020. A players’ launch angle often has to increase for their power numbers to increase, but it’s been the opposite for Hoskins so far, something to keep in mind.

Although, we can’t tell the whole story without mentioning the following trends as well.

The bad…

Walk rate is down: 15.7% → 4.3%**
Chase rate is up: 22.2% → 25.9%**
Strikeout rate is up: 23.2% → 33.7%**
Zone contact percentage down: 79% → 73.2%**

**Worst marks of career

Hoskins led the National League with 116 walks and posted a walk rate of 16.5 percent in 2019, followed by a 15.7 percent mark in 2020. But this season, that number has dropped to 4.5 percent.

Hoskins’ overall swing percentage is up almost six percent, from 41.5 to 47.3, and his whiff rate (overall swings and misses) is up from 26.6 to 31.1 percent, showing a more aggressive approach at the plate this season. That’s fine for a power-hitting first baseman, he’s just had to sacrifice some of his patented patient approach to do it.

His chase rate is also up 3.7 percent, meaning he’s swinging at more pitches outside the strike zone, and his contact percentage on pitches in the zone, which has decreased every season of his career, is down almost 6 percent. Both of those trends have led to more strikeouts and fewer walks. Again, not terribly concerning as long as when he does hit the ball, he hits it hard, because hard contact generally leads to more hits and homers over time.