Philadelphia Phillies: What To Do With Rhys Hoskins

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after a disappointing season stamped by a brutal finish, should the Philadelphia Phillies explore moving on from Rhys Hoskins?

Is Rhys Hoskins long for the Philadelphia Phillies?

Before 2019, asking this question would have seemed ridiculous, and after the 26-year-old’s massive Opening Day grand slam, doubting his future in Philadelphia would have seemed even more foolish. Hoskins had all the makings of the middle-of-the-lineup bat needed as the club set its sights on the NL East crown.

On paper, Hoskins seems like a perfect antithesis to the Phillies $330MM superstar Bryce Harper. While Harper does his damage via an aggressive approach from the left side of the plate, Hoskins makes use of excellent patience to drive pitches from the right side.

Harper’s fast, level swing produces more line drives, whereas Hoskins’ swing looks to maximize launch angle, a paradigm of the sabermetric approach that has swept baseball in recent years. With these two in the center of the Phillies offense, the team had what looked like an incredibly potent lineup.

After losing their divisional lead to the eventual-division champion Atlanta Braves on June 12, the Phillies scuffled to a disappointing 81-81 finish. The team faltered down the stretch, going just 25-30 in the season’s last two months. Hoskins found himself in a nasty slump during this same stretch, perhaps unfairly serving as a projection of the team’s struggles.

From August 1 through the end of the season, Hoskins hit a putrid .166/.308/.326, good for a 63 wRC+, per Fangraphs. His finish to the season raised some serious questions, with his future with the team chief among them.

What exactly caused Hoskins’ slump, and what can he do to recover from it? If he can’t right the ship, should the Philadelphia Phillies consider moving him, specifically for some help in the rotation?

Behind Hoskins’ Brutal Slump

Look at Hoskins’ 2019 season in its entirety, and his numbers are actually quite good, albeit slightly below his 2018 output. Overall, he slashed .226/.364/.454 with 29 HRs, amassing 2.2 fWAR. His walk rate and strikeout rate both improved, as well as his Hard%. However, when looking into his two-month slump that carried through the end of the season, it seems that a few sudden changes turned Hoskins from a fearsome power bat into a hitter pitchers feasted on.

Pitchers tend to attack Hoskins with a steady diet of fastballs and sliders, which account for upwards of 60% of the pitches he sees, regardless of the count of the at-bat. This strategy shifted slightly in August, where Hoskins was thrown less breaking pitches in exchange for fastballs up in the zone. Hoskins, who thrives when attack pitches low in the zone, failed to adjust.

In August, a season-high 62.27% of all pitches Hoskins was thrown were fastballs. Knowing that those aren’t pitches he excels with, Hoskins swung less on heaters. When he decided to swing, he hit groundballs far too often – not a wise strategy for a hitter who faced the shift in 45% of his at-bats in August.

An uptick in fastballs wasn’t the true issue at the core of this slump, however. In laying off of high heat, Hoskins showed his hand – he was waiting on low breaking balls. Pitchers knew this, and in turn, began throwing less of them for strikes.

In August and September, Hoskins saw significantly more breaking balls out of the zone than he did earlier in the season. He couldn’t help but swing, evidenced by a climbing whiff rate than peaked at a massive 19.77% in September.

With fastballs shifting upwards and breaking pitches falling below the zone, Hoskins struggled to produce. The low breaking balls he once crushed were no more, as he failed to adjust to this altered pitch breakdown. The gap between pitch density grew, and Hoskins found himself dangling in the middle – his ISO dropped to .161, rendering his bat weakened.

Now that we’ve seen what happened to Hoskins as the 2019 season came to a close, the question now becomes whether or not the Philadelphia Phillies can trust that’ll turn things around.

The Phils Should Keep Hoskins

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The Philadelphia Phillies are in desperate need of pitching help, as the club finished 23rd in starting rotation fWAR in 2019. Although they should pursue big-name free agents such as Gerrit Cole and Stephen Strasburg, GM Matt Klentak should also explore the trade market. Arms such as German Marquez, Jon Gray, and Noah Syndergaard could be had for the right deal, and Hoskins, at the age of 26, has the combination of skills, experience, and potential that could entice front offices.

In dealing Hoskins now, however, the Phillies would be selling extremely low on their first baseman. He ended 2019 with this one of the worst stretches of his young career. Even more so, there is evidence that his struggles could be turned around. Despite a rise in groundballs and whiff, consider this: Hoskins actually made solid contact more often in August and September than he did prior.

It seems as if Hoskins needs to spend his offseason working on hitting high fastballs while resisting the urge to chase breaking balls low in the zone. The slugger once tagged as an offensive cog is still in there, and the Phillies would rather have him re-emerge in Philadelphia than some other city.

All Major League hitters endure slumps, some of which become especially dreadful. Rhys Hoskins battled through quite a difficult one at the end of 2019, but there are reasons to be optimistic that his performance then is an outlier, not the new norm.

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With some key players returning from injury and hopefully some big free-agent signings, the Philadelphia Phillies should find themselves in a prime spot to battle for the NL East title in 2020. If so, I’d wager a resurgent Rhys Hoskins is a big reason why.

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