Rhys Hoskins: Doing about what you’d expect

After an IL stint and a lengthy cold spell, Hoskins is back to producing

It has been an up-and-down season for Rhys Hoskins. Signed by the Brewers as a relatively major free agent, he was expected to provide stability and homers to a very young offense. It hasn’t been the smoothest path, which we’ll examine a bit below, but after a couple of rough months, Hoskins has found an offensive groove, and on the whole, he now resembles the player he was in Philadelphia, even if his approach has changed a bit over the years.

Hoskins did not play in 2023. Entering his walk year with the Phillies, he tore his ACL late in spring training. While there were whispers that he could potentially have been available to hit had the Phillies made it to the World Series, the Arizona Diamondbacks made sure that we never found out whether there was any truth to those rumors. Hoskins became a free agent in a tricky position.

But before that, Hoskins’ tenure in Philadelphia was marked largely by consistency. After bursting onto the scene with 18 home runs in just 50 games as a rookie in 2017, Hoskins settled in as a guy who would give you about 30 homers and hit somewhere around .245. He did this basically every year: .246 with 34 homers in 2018, .226 with 29 homers in 2019, .245 with 10 homers (about a 30-homer pace) in the shortened 2020 season, .247 and 27 in 2021 (in only 107 games), .246 and 30 in 2022.

But if you look under the hood, one thing did not remain consistent, and that was his walk rate. Early in his career, Hoskins walked all the time. His walk rate was 17.5% (elite—that would be behind only Aaron Judge and Juan Soto in 2024) in his 50-game rookie season, a still-very-good 13.2% in 2018, and 16.5%, which was fifth in baseball, in 2019, a season in which he led the National League with 116 walks. He still walked a bunch in 2020 (15.7% in a small sample) but that walk rate tailed off in 2021: he walked only 47 times in 443 plate appearances that year (10.6%) and was essentially the same in 2022 (72 times in 672 PA, 10.7%).

In 2024, that walk rate is even lower, at 9.4%. Maybe that’s impatience on Hoskins’ part, or maybe it’s pitchers being less careful given that Hoskins has gone through some struggles this season—Hoskins is getting more strikes (about 52% this season) than in any other season of his career (never above 50%), but his chase percentage in 2024, 25.2% (which is in the 69^th percentile), is also up; aside from 2021 (a bit of an outlier, 25.3% and 65^th percentile) he’s never had a chase rate above 23.2% nor finished lower than the 80^th percentile.

Let’s break Hoskins’ season into three parts to check out what’s been happening:

• Pre-hamstring injury (March 29-May 13): 156 PA, .233/.340/.474, 9 HR, 18 BB, 11.5% walk rate
• Post-hamstring injury (May 31-July 23): 153 PA, .193/.270/.356, 6 HR, 13 BB, 8.5% walk rate
• Hit streak and beyond (July 24-Sunday’s game): 62 PA, .304/.339/.607, 5 HR, 4 BB, 6.5% walk rate

From the beginning of the season until Hoskins’ threeish-week stint on the injured list, he was looking very much like the Rhys Hoskins of the Phillies, particularly the 2021 and 2022 seasons. Then he got hurt and struggled badly upon his return. Now he’s hitting, but his walks are even further down.

If you average all of this together, well…you get a Rhys Hoskins that isn’t all that unlike the one we’re used to. His overall numbers are still down a bit: he’s hitting .228, and in the only other season his batting average was that low, he led the league in walks to make up for it. He’s not walking at that level this season, so he’s looking at a .311 OBP, the worst of his career by over 20 points. His OPS+ is 108, lower than his previous career low (111 in ’19). But the power is solid: his .219 ISO (slugging minus batting average) is basically the same as it was in 2022 and 2019. And if you cheat and leave out the bad middle section, Hoskins is hitting .254 and slugging .513, which gives him a .259 ISO, right up there with his very good 2018 and 2020 seasons.

Hitters get cold, though, and we’re not getting peak Hoskins, but what would you expect? The walk percentages had gone down enough before he left the Phillies that I think the ship has sailed on him being a player who walks 15% of the time. He’s coming off missing a whole year due to injury, and that’s hard for anyone. He’s 31 now, not old by any means, but you wouldn’t really expect him to get better at this age.

Despite the ups and downs, on aggregate Hoskins is performing about how the Brewers probably expected him to when they signed him as a free agent before the season. If he can perform at a fairly typical Hoskins level for the rest of the season, (more walks but fewer hits than the last couple of weeks, a similar number of homers) he’ll probably finish somewhere around .235 with 28-30 home runs. Looks familiar!

Will he be back next year? It’s difficult to say. Hoskins can opt out after the season, but he’d be leaving $18 million on the table. That’s a lot, and I’m not convinced he could get that on the free-agent market. He’s a defensive minus at this point, even at a low-impact position. Another year removed from the injury may level out some of the rollercoaster nature of this season, but I wouldn’t expect his final numbers to look all that much different. If I were Hoskins, I’d probably stay.

If he does, I won’t be mad. Hoskins seems like a good clubhouse guy, the fans in Philadelphia obviously loved him, and his game, which requires basically no (relative) athleticism, strikes me as the kind that can age reasonably gracefully. The Brewers have had far worse options at first base in the years since Prince Fielder left (I’m going to write about this one day). If I had to bet, I’d say that Hoskins does not opt out. $18 million is a lot for a player with a 108 OPS+, but the Brewers need his home runs—Hoskins has six more homers than anyone on the team besides Willy Adames—and he’s not really blocking anyone unless you’re a huge believer in Tyler Black as a first baseman. (It should be noted that there’s a buyout on Hoskins’ contract next year, too: if Hoskins declines the option, the Brewers have to pay him $4m, which seems strange to me, but that’s how it works, I guess. Same deal in 2026, but it’s a mutual option: $18m with a $4m buyout.)

The Rhys Hoskins Experience has been frustrating at times this season, but he’s given us some memorable moments in his short time as a Brewer, from the Jeff McNeil “wah-wah” face in the first series of the season to his dramatic eighth-inning homer on Saturday. For all the handwringing during his extended cold spell, it looks like he’ll finish the season with a batting line that fits alongside his Phillies years, and as he has heated up here in August, it seems that Hoskins and his power bat have a big role to play down the stretch.