The Brewers signed Rhys Hoskins last offseason to be a power bat in the middle of the lineup. It was a bit of a gamble by the team, as Hoskins missed all of last season with a torn ACL, but a measured one because of his consistent ability to hit. Coming into 2024, Hoskins had over 2,800 plate appearances with a 125 wRC+ and turned 31 toward the end of spring training. By all accounts, he is great in both the clubhouse and community, and was clearly a fan favorite during his six Major League seasons in Philadelphia. But despite his consistent seasonal output, he was also known in Philadelphia to be a streaky hitter.

If we look at Hoskins' offensive output by month over his career, we can see some of that inconsistency, where he'll struggle for a month or two before rebounding (splits data all from Fangraphs).

The last data point in the plot is this month, June 2024, one of the worst months in his career to date. Much of that inconsistency can be attributed to right-handed pitching.

In particular, according to Baseball-Reference, it appears that Hoskins struggles against power pitchers. Those are defined as "in the top third of the league in strikeouts plus walks." His OPS is much lower against these pure strikeout pitchers.

It is possible that in the months he is struggling, he is facing more power pitchers or getting poor match ups, playing in difficult stadiums, or it might just be randomness. But most of it occurs against right-handed pitching, which is to be expected, since Hoskins is himself right-handed. His career splits show that he has been a pretty good hitter against everyone, but that he has particularly taken advantage of his platoon splits against lefties.

And that brings us to 2024. The right-handed, first base-playing, power bat in the middle of the Brewers lineup has a 66 wRC+ against left-handed pitching this season. Instead of hitting like Ronald Acuna Jr., he's hitting like Martin Maldonado. He has a wRC+ below 100 against southpaws every month this season, a streak in his career matched only by the second half of 2018.

In May of that year, Hoskins fouled a ball off his face and landed on the disabled list with a fractured jaw. He returned 11 days later and demolished right-handed pitching but struggled against lefties. This year, he has dealt with an injured hamstring and his return to baseball after an entire year and has yet to prove that he can hit opposite-handed pitching.

What is happening in his approach that is causing him to have a .172 batting average, 5 total hits, one home run, and a .261 wOBA against lefties? His Baseball Savant page can give us some clues. All of the following statistics will be against left-handed pitching. He has a .327 wOBA against the fastball but .181 and .111 against breaking stuff and offspeed, respectively. But his walk and strikeout rates this season (11.4% to 17.1%) are actually better than his career numbers (17.9% to 20%). He is seeing more fastballs (65% compared to 52% in 2022 and 59% in 2021) and is whiffing on them a little more (24% fastball whiff rate in 2024 vs. 18% in 2022).

His barrel rate against all pitches is down this year, from 14% in 2020, 19% in 2021, and 15% in 2022 to 8% in 2024. So he isn't necessarily swinging and missing, but swinging and missing the barrel against lefties. He has a 100% ground ball rate against breaking pitches and 43% against offspeed this year, up from 33% for both in 2022. His pop-up rate on fastballs this season is 38%, up from 12% in 2022.

Taking in all that information, it appears that Hoskins is getting under the fastball to pop it up and getting on top of the breaking and offspeed stuff to ground it weakly to shortstop or third base.

Hopefully he can get back to mashing lefties and providing high quality plate appearances against right-handed pitching. But for now, he is one of the main reasons that the Brewers are struggling mightily against southpaws this season.