Rhys Hoskins' Secret to Infield Hit Immortality

The other day, I wrote about Jake McCarthy's BABIP, and I touched on thinking about what types of hitters would put numbers outside of that statistic. McCarthy hits a lot of grounders, which generally produce a higher BABIP than fly balls (although they are less productive in other metrics). He's also left-handed and very quick, which means he should be able to beat fielders on inside singles.

So let's take a look at the infield hit rate leaderboard for professional hitters. This is the percentage of ground balls produced by a batter that turn into infield hits. Simple enough:

So, Bellinger is best known for grinding out hanging curveballs for his bread, but despite his size, he's a left-handed fastball. That's the tracks. Peña is good, but very fast. His home run average ranks in the top 20 among all hitters — lefties and righties alike — this season. And because Peña hits more grounders, he leads all batters with 24 hits.

Then there's Rhys Hoskins. Wait, what?

Hoskins has the lowest ground ball rate in the league – fifth out of 140 professional hitters as of this writing – but that means his 10 infield hits make up an impressive 13.2% of his total. That's third-best in baseball.

As a player, Hoskins is the anti-McCarthy. He is a right-handed hitter who hits first base and DH, according to Baseball Savant, with a nine percent slugging percentage. Poppycock, says I. More than 600 players have registered at least one plate appearance in the majors this season. Are we meant to believe there are 50 major leaguers slower than Hoskins? I think if you've explored Easter Island you'd be hard pressed to find 50 moai slower than Hoskins.

And this guy hits a higher percentage of ground balls than Bobby Witt Jr. and other fast guys? Are you getting lucky or is something going on here?

Well, 10 infield hits is a small enough number that I went back and watched them all. You can too, if you like. Here is what I found.

Four of them were groundouts down the third base line. In both of these, the third baseman was unable to throw hard. In another, Oswaldo Cabrera tries to Roger Dorn it and it goes off his glove. You have to put your body in front of the ball, kid! In the fourth, Jared Triolo made a nice play and would have picked Hoskins out if Rowdy Tellez hadn't completely stopped trying to throw the ball and catch the bag.

Others are a combination of rare hops or dinks in no man's land. There was a 33 mph lob over Justin Steele's shoulder that looked like a well-placed rugby kick. Another ball went off the tip of Elly De La Cruz's glove, but it would have if the Reds hadn't played the infield when they were down 7-0 in the third inning. You are not fooling anyone.

My working theory was that Hoskins was benefiting from infielders not expecting him to hit ground balls. (Surprise, after all, is one of the main weapons of the Spanish Inquisition.) Perhaps some of those former supporters will resist the change or wander off into unguarded territory.

That actually happened a time or two, but the main thing I took away from watching Hoskins' infield hits is that I now 100% believe the theory that MLB orders the official hitters not to give up errors, in order to illegally increase the league-wide batting average. and make it look like the shift ban is more active than it really is. Of these 10 hits, I personally would have found three mistakes and I will hear arguments to that effect in five.

Taking off the tin foil helmet for now, the real reason Hoskins' infield hit rate is so high is a statistical quirk. The denominator is not ground balls inside, but total ground balls. An extreme fly ball hitter like Hoskins doesn't put as many balls on the ground, but the ones he does hit don't go infield.

Remember, hitting the infield is not the best situation for the grounder – i outside hit is.

Only 12.2% of Hoskins' bottoms feel the freedom of outdoor grass next to their seams. That's less than half of Bellinger's average. Even so, you still get a lot of hits inside the slow guy. Hoskins' batting average on infield grounders is .154, which is 39th out of 330 hitters with at least 50 ground balls. Even with the decision in favor of goals at times, he shouldn't have done this.

There is another right-handed slugger, a fly-ball extreme, who eats more outfielders than Hoskins: Adam Duvall. Duvall doesn't have enough plate appearances to qualify for the hitting title, but if we lower the plate appearance limit to 250 (Duvall is at 317), the Braves outfielder becomes the Aaron Judge of infield hit rate.

Duvall's infield strikeout rate is 23.7%; even with reduced playing time, he's not within five points of him. Only two others are above 15%. Duvall, unlike Hoskins, is able to pass the tectonic plate, but this is still a shocking number.

My original theory about the basics of surprise seems a little watered down, but it's not that far from the truth. With that amount of playing time, Duvall boasts one of the 10 lowest GB/FB ratios in the game. Like Hoskins, any groundball hits by Duvall is a surprise. But perhaps more important to the issue at hand: Every grounder he hits is an error.

When a base hitter, like Peña, hits one into the deck, there's a good chance it's going to make solid contact. When Duvall or Hoskins do it, the ball comes off the bat softer and not at a weird angle.

And as absurd as this sounds, anyone who has watched more than a handful of baseball games in their life knows it's true: The harder a groundball is hit, the better it's going through the infield. Because otherwise, in most cases all that extra speed does is give the fielder more time to get out. Sometimes two.

So of the 330 hitters with at least 50 grounders this season, Duvall is 314th in average velocity for infield grounders; Hoskins is 321st. Across all bases, Duvall is 321st in exit velocity; Hoskins is 329th.

Remember that last table? Let's expand it to include the exit velocity numbers for both the innings and total bases, as well as the string at Duvall, and Oneil Cruz, who is ranked at no. 1 in baseball for hitting hard ground balls:

Much to Bellinger's delight, not only did he get 27% of his grounders on the field (one of the highest marks in baseball) but he also struck out the highest percentage of infield grounders. Bellinger and Witt led the way in groundball production, hitting .432 and .422, respectively, while the league as a whole hit .246.

However, because Cruz hits the ball so hard, he gets a high percentage of the grounders in the field. But despite his plus-plus speed, Cruz is essentially dead in the water when a fielder gets his glove on the ball. Hoskins, who could only hit Cruz on a home run to first if Cruz had to run the bases backwards, nearly doubled the Pirates shortstop's batting average on infielders. And it's not just the Cruz; The top nine hitters in batting average in the infield (and 14 of the top 15) hit less than .100 on those balls.

Hey, maybe we just discovered a market inefficiency: If you're going to hit the ball, hit it hard! Well, it's not. First, Cruz still hits a higher average than Duvall or Hoskins on perfect grounders — again, he wants to get the ball in the infield. Second, I averaged the groundball hard-hit average against the infield grounder batting average and came up with the following:

Do you see the connection? No? That's because he doesn't exist. Hoskins and Duvall's ability to get on base with inside hits is a nice bonus for two guys who need to get down any way they can. And it could happen again, as both had multiple seasons of double-digit hits even heading into 2024. But it is not the secret of eternal glory in support. You still want to try to hit the ball hard; just know that sometimes, things work out even if you don't.