Say Hey, Baseball has gathered you here today to discuss one Rhys Hoskins, who hit his 18th home run in his 33rd game, faster than anyone else. He was the fastest to home run number 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, and nine, too. The Cleveland Indians walk-off to break (and also not break?) the MLB win streak record is prominently featured in the Elsewhere in Baseball section because Hoskins is a baseball dad in a 24-year-old body that rockets off moonshots, and it’s time to talk about it.
Rhys Hoskins hits his first opposite field dinger
Friday’s Say Hey, Baseball looks at the demi-god Rhys Hoskins and Cleveland winning, like, a lot of baseball games.
Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
Hoskins is performing at an unprecedented level, but you haven’t seen it in a Say Hey, Baseball headline. Marc won’t do it because his words might actually be powerful enough to knock Hoskins off his god-bound trajectory. Fair. My words have no such power, so I will head into the valley of the darkness and hope this is quick enough to come out on the other side with many, many more Hoskins homers.
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What Rhys is doing is incredible. He is incredible. It’s OK if it doesn’t last because, at least at his current rate, it probably wouldn’t anyway. And it’s OK to hold your breath just in case one loud sigh finds whatever the extra gear is in his body that guides his impeccable timing, knocking it out of whack and reverting him into maybe *just* an average 2005 Ryan-Howard-Rookie-of-the-Year type. The rules of the baseball universe allow oxygen-less survival in such circumstances.
Hoskins’ unmatched proliferation of homers is sending his stats off the proverbial chart: His wRC+ is 205, his ISO is .474, his OPS is 1.272, and he’s accrued 2.2 rWAR, more than every position player not named Odubel Herrera. Howie Kendrick has accrued 1.6 rWAR in 39 games. But Hoskins is putting on a clinic on baseball minutiae, too. When he’s gotten to a 3-0 count, he’s either homered or walked. He has four home runs after getting to an 0-2 count and nine home runs with two strikes. All a 33-game sample size allows to be asserted is that this is nuts, and honestly, what else could matter?
Hoskins represents a very beginning of a return to a time when Phillies fans had a beloved franchise player to wow them with offensive domination, let alone a reason to turn on games. He’s the beginning of the end of the rebuild. However hard the Phillies can be to watch, Hoskins is making everyone look.
- Grant Brisbee and all the ghosts of the 1916 Giants assert that the One True Win Streak Record is 26. It wouldn’t be baseball if it didn’t try to throw a caveat at you every time you think you know something.
- Francisco Lindor doubled with two strikes and two outs in the ninth to tie the game and set up this Jay Bruce walk-off. The sell-out crowd in Cleveland approved.
- The One True Win Streak Record is 26, but also, the Indians broke the record with 22 consecutive wins in a crazy 10-inning walk-off after being down to their last strike in the ninth.
- The Tigers were mathematically eliminated from the playoffs last night, and the Mets joined them.
- As if Rhys Hoskins home runs could get any better, No. 18 has a whole lot of people waiting on chicken nuggets from a Phillies fan who should figure some things out if they ever wanna go to Vegas.
- Tommy Pham is the fifth player to reach the 20/20 club in 2017. With others knocking on the door, what does this mean for the state of speed and power in the MLB?
- David Price, Andrew Miller, and Felix Hernandez are back from the disabled list. What are they bringing back to the Red Sox, Indians, and Mariners?
- King Felix’s return to the Mariners went well, and all was quiet on the Western Front.
- The Yankees scored a lot of runs and the Orioles did not. They also realized the power of the thumbs-down though, so maybe that was the real victory.
- With a 5 1/2 game lead over the Nationals for the best record in baseball, the Dodgers come to DC with six games in the standings at stake. Here is the TV, game time, and starting pitching info.
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