Eric Hosmer: Stuck at First Base

Eric Hosmer turned 26 this past Saturday. He completed his fifth season earlier this month and starts his second straight World Series tonight against the Mets. The 2015 season was his best yet, though that was due largely to the team around him as opposed to skills growth within his game.

His .297/.363/.459 line looks a lot like his 2011 (.293/.344/.465) and 2013 (.302/.353/.448) lines, but the 93 RBI and 98 R were easily career highs. Previous highs of 79 RBI and 86 R were both set in that 2013 season. Every other part of his game looked like something we’ve already seen.

The Royals have come to be defined by their contact-heavy approach on offense so it’s no surprise that their star player and cleanup hitter epitomizes the method. He has yet to log a K% north of 17% in five seasons. If there’s a downside to this approach, it usually comes via a modest walk rate. Hosmer is at 8% for his career, reaching as high as 9% twice, including 2015. He has been remarkably consistent in this area of his game:

This fits with what we saw from him as a minor leaguer. His BB% was better (12%) giving him a very healthy 0.76 BB/K rate, but his 15% K rate is almost dead-even with major league mark.
While not exactly predictive, Hosmer has the every-other-season pattern going in his early career. His big rookie year was followed by the dreaded sophomore slump. He topped even the rookie effort in his third season before again falling back in ’14 and then this year’s big season. The determining factor in the two down seasons was an absence of power.

He still doesn’t have a 20-HR season and while he did miss time last year, he only hit 9 HR in 547 PA. League average ISO in his career has ranged from .135 (2014) to .151 (2012). He has topped .151 twice and been below .135 twice. The problem is that he’s already walking the wire with his power at first base so while is power passable for the league, against his 1B peers, he’s in big trouble.

The league average ISO at first base has sat in the upper-.170s for most of his career, with a low of .167 last year and high of .185 this year. He actually found the right era to be a first baseman with this kind of power. From 1994-2010, the 1B ISO never dipped below .183 and peaked at .207 (2000). Only 30 qualified players were at .207 or better league-wide this year, including nine first basemen. In 2000, there were 60 players across the league at .207 or better, 13 of them played first base.

Hosmer is a little better than an average power hitter at his best which means he’s well-below average for his position. Perhaps there’s more to unlock as he gets older, but it would take a sharp change in his batted ball profile.

He’s been a groundball hitter from day 1, a bad trait for a wannabe power hitter. He has hit at least 50% of his batted balls on the ground, including 52% this past season. Only five of the 55 hitters with 20+ HR also had a 50% or higher GB rate, but none of them reached Hosmer’s 52% mark and none were first basemen. Shin-Soo Choo, Russell Martin, and Robinson Cano were all at 51% while A.J. Pollock and Ryan Braun were both at 50%.

As we all know, a contact-heavy groundball-first approach just isn’t conducive to power. Looking at the same 55 hitters with 20+ HR, we see only 14 matched or bested Hosmer’s 16% K rate, including three teammates: Mike Moustakas (22 HR, 12% K), Salvador Perez (21, 15%), and Kendrys Morales (22, 16%). Only two (Perez & Cano) were below his 0.50 BB/K, though. Pollock and Cano were the only ones with a 50% or higher GB rate, too.

While Hosmer does lack the prototypical power for his position, he offsets some of that with strong batting averages almost every year. He’s a career .280 hitter with three seasons well north of that, including this year’s .297 mark – good for fifth among qualified 1B.

Unfortunately, batting average isn’t as stable as raw power. In 2012, his BABIP cratered to .255 leaving him with a .232 AVG. In 2014, his .312 BABIP was perfectly fine, but he still hit just .270 that year (looks like he might’ve been going for more pop that year, trading line drives for flyballs). That said, through five years, you feel comfortable about getting a useful-to-good AVG from Hosmer.

The last element of his game is speed, something where his position has helped him in the past. He had double-digit SB totals in each of his first three seasons (11, 16, 11), but is just 11-for-16 in the last two years combined as the opportunities have severely declined. His SBO% (SB+CS/1B+BB) tumbled in ’14 and stayed down this year: 10%, 12%, 8%, 5%, and 5%.

It was particularly concerning last year when his extra-base taken rate also bottomed out at 32% (league avg. ~40% since ‘11) after years in the mid-40%s. This year it spiked to a career-high 52% suggesting that the speed isn’t necessarily gone, but chances are drying up as expectations shift to him being a run-producer. He has logged 14 of his career 49 SB out of the cleanup spot, but a big part of that is just the fact that he’s logged the most PA in that spot (1054).

As you might expect, he doesn’t run as much in the more important batting spots:

We have 3000 PA of work from Hosmer which is a pretty telling sample. At the same time, he is still relatively young so he might not be locked into these skills. It would likely be a gradual shift, though, so I think we’re likely to see more of the same in ’16. A strong hit tool, average-at-best pop, and once-average speed that is melting away ultimately leave his value tied to the vagaries of batting average and the team-dependent number (R/RBI).

There could be a breakout coming, but it’s not in the numbers. Too bad he doesn’t play literally any other position. He finished sixth among 1B on ESPN’s Player Rater this year after being the 28th 1B (176th overall) off the board. He will obviously jump way up in average draft position, but I doubt he repeats as the sixth-best by the end of 2016.

While you might not love the idea of taking two 1B in the top 100, I think Hosmer is best deployed at the corner infield (CI) spot in mixed leagues. The toughest part is that 1B and 3B are both deep so it’s obviously a position you can wait on, but if you’re dead set on having some Hosmer stock, it’s your best bet.