Should the Phillies Actually Get Rid of Rhys Hoskins?

“Mike from Shamong you’re on 94.1 WIP.”

“Hey, Joe, first time long time, thanks for having me on.”

“I hear you want to talk some Phillies. What’s on your mind, brother?”

“Joe, the Phils gotta get rid of Rhys Hoskins. I know he’s been around a while and people say he’s a nice guy but I just can’t stand to watch him anymore. He struck out 10 times in the World Series, he drops every third ball that comes to him, he’s the reason we lost!”

“Well Mike, most of the Phillies lineup went missing at the end of the Wo—”

“I HATE HIS STINKING GUTS JOE! I CAN’T STAND TO LOOK AT HIM!”

“So you want to trade him, then?”

“I do, Joe. Hoskins only has one year left before free agency, and we can’t lose him for nothing. Look, Nola was pretty bad in the World Series too. Maybe we can trade Hoskins for a no. 2 starter? How about that kid from San Diego, Musgraves? Yeah, Hoskins to the Padres for Musgraves and a first-round pick. What do you think about that? I’ll take my answer off the air.”

Obviously this exchange didn’t literally happen. Actually, you know what? Having not listened to every minute of Philadelphia’s two sports talk radio stations the past two weeks, I can’t make that guarantee. But suffice it to say, the Phillies’ Cinderella run to the World Series raised expectations to the point where a lot of people are disappointed they couldn’t close the Astros out, and Hoskins is taking a lot of the blame.

The local discourse around Hoskins has always been a little weird. As the Phillies’ longest-tenured position player, he’s been around long enough to suffer from what I call Bobby Abreu Syndrome: When the Phillies stink, the best player gets blamed because he’s the only name people know. And Hoskins was so good as a rookie — 18 home runs and a .396 OBP in 50 games, basically a third of a better version of the Pete Alonso rookie year — he set the bar too high for himself. In the past five years, Hoskins has been an average-to-slightly above-average first baseman rather than a superstar. The flaws in his game — a streaky bat, a high strikeout rate, and a highly unreliable glove — are obvious and frustrating, even if the good mostly outweighs the bad.

Generally, I’m of the opinion that people ought to cut Hoskins a little slack. But it’s hard to look at his postseason performance — his six home runs didn’t quite hide the fact that he produced just five other hits and four walks against 24 strikeouts, or a handful of costly misplays in the field — and not at least wonder about what moving on from him would look like.

First of all, if Hoskins does get traded, he’s not bringing back a player who’d markedly improve the team elsewhere. First basemen with one year left until free agency don’t get traded much at all, because if all you need is a dude with big power who can wear the big glove, that kind of player can be had in free agency. And any team that’ll need Hoskins in 2023 probably wouldn’t be too keen on giving up a major league contributor anyway.

The best-case scenario in a Hoskins trade is probably something like what the Cubs got for Anthony Rizzo: Kevin Alcantara, an outfield prospect who blew up around the time of the trade, and an OK pitching prospect in Alexander Vizcaíno. When the Nationals traded Kyle Schwarber to Boston around the same time, they also got a pitching prospect who turned into a back-end-of-the-organization type. The 2022 deadline offers little further elucidation; insofar as any Hoskins-type players moved at all, two of them (Josh Bell and Luke Voit) got swapped for each other in the Juan Soto deal, and Trey Mancini went from Baltimore to Houston in a three-teamer. That makes it difficult to compute each player’s discrete value.

If the Phillies want to replace Hoskins, they could do so internally by moving another corner guy — most likely Schwarber or Alec Bohm — to first. (Darick Hall, the affable rookie with big power, is not the kind of player you’d plug in to replace an incumbent who lost his job because of strikeouts and bad defense.) I’m not convinced Bohm would be a defensive upgrade, but it would open the door to bringing back Jean Segura, whose option was declined earlier this week, in addition to shelling out for one of the big-name free-agent shortstops.

But a trade would require the Phillies to shell out just as many prospects as they’d receive in a hypothetical Hoskins deal — more, if they want an actual upgrade. So let’s see who’s out there in free agency. The first thing you should know: There is no Freddie Freeman in this year’s class. Let’s leave aside for the moment the fun and weird possibilities, like signing Justin Turner or Japanese batting champion (and the Craig Pelton to Bryce Harper’s Jeff Winger) Masataka Yoshida to play first.

Here’s how Hoskins stacks up against the first basemen on our Top 50 Free Agents rankings, along with their Steamer-projected WAR and wRC+, as well as projected salary for 2023, via Matt Swartz of MLB Trade Rumors for Hoskins’ arbitration award, and Ben Clemens’s prediction for the various free agents.

Meh? If all things were equal, I could see wanting to upgrade to Rizzo, who’s been outhit by Hoskins in four of Hoskins’ six years in the majors but is a far superior defensive first baseman. That said, he not only turned down his $16 million player option for 2023, but he’s also going to be tagged with a qualifying offer. If he turns that down, it would signify a belief that he can get upwards of $20 million per year, likely on a multi-year commitment. If the Phillies paid that price in addition to losing a draft pick, that would give them four corner guys in their 30s on multi-year contracts worth (roughly, let’s round Schwarber’s $19.75 million AAV up) $20 million a year or more. I’d just as soon ride out one more year with Hoskins and kick the can down the road. Bell, too, would be enticing, particularly if he could be had for cheaper. But he also had a rough postseason and would represent a calculated risk rather than a clear upgrade.

In case you couldn’t already see Betteridge’s Law of Headlines growing closer and closer on the horizon, here’s the case for why it would make sense to keep Hoskins. First of all, he’s cheaper than any plainly superior first baseman on the market, which would give the Phillies more financial resources with which to pursue an upgrade in the rotation, a star shortstop, or both. Second, once Harper regains his ability to throw after offseason surgery, probably in late April or early May, the DH spot will be open. Even if Hoskins only DHs part-time, that’d lessen the negative impact of his glove.

Third, the problem with Hoskins wasn’t that he took a golden sombrero in Game 6 of the World Series; it’s that he took a golden sombrero in Game 6 of the World Series out of the two-hole, which created a discontinuity between Schwarber and Harper, Philadelphia’s two most dangerous hitters. Whether Rob Thomson should’ve shuffled up the order is a different argument; there really wasn’t an obvious better option. The Phillies could change that by upgrading at shortstop, or even by getting anything out of Nick Castellanos, who can’t possibly be as bad next year as he was in 2023.

There are concerning trends in Hoskins’ offensive performance, to be sure. He just posted the lowest ISO and OBP of his career, and the superb 15%-plus walk rate that made him so dangerous early in his career has dropped into the 10% range the past two seasons. But those shortcomings will be easier to weather if he’s hitting lower in the lineup.

Hoskins is far from a perfect player, and the Phillies should at least explore other first base options when he hits free agency in a year’s time. But he’s plenty good enough to start on a team with World Series ambitions.