For Phillies Rhys Hoskins, its back to defensive basics every morning with Bobby Dickerson

April 14, 2024

TAMPA, Fla. — This spring, five mornings a week, Rhys Hoskins meets Bobby Dickerson on the half field adjacent to BayCare Ballpark for extra work. “It’s the time to do it,” Hoskins said. There are no magical cures found here. No one is pretending that Hoskins, a productive hitter who is prone to defensive mistakes at first base, will solve everything. But Dickerson, the veteran infield coach, brought some ideas to Phillies camp.

He wanted to go back to basics. The most basic of basics.

“Something I haven’t been thinking about for 20 years, probably,” Hoskins said.

Dickerson is passionate about the art of fielding. He deconstructs the routine motions infielders make. He makes direct suggestions that might insult established players paid millions and millions, but they listen because Dickerson has earned it.

“You also have to have somebody like him,” Hoskins said. “He loves it. He loves it so much. He loves the simplicity of what he thinks fielding a groundball is.”

It’s easy to sit and think about it. Catch the ball. Grab the ball. Throw the ball.

“Now,” Hoskins said, “it happens like this.”

He snapped his fingers three times fast.

“But, like, it doesn’t have to,” Hoskins said. “There’s still time in between those.”

He snapped his fingers slower and slower.

It started with a simple request: Stick out your damn glove sooner when someone is throwing you the baseball. Hoskins had not thought about this in a long time. But there were too many instances in which he botched the most routine of routine plays for a first baseman.

“How do you drop a throw that’s right to your chest?” Dickerson said. “Right? And he says it himself: ‘Man.’ It’s just a little bit late glove presentation. The ball beats him there a little bit.”

Dickerson said something that stuck in Hoskins’ head.

“The only way to catch the ball is if the glove can see the ball,” Hoskins said. “Right?”

Often, Hoskins would hold his left arm at his side and flip up the glove as the throw neared him. It created unneeded movements. There were too many moving parts. Dickerson has done a drill with Hoskins this spring where he’ll throw Hoskins some short-hop picks, then Hoskins turns to face the plate and another coach hits him a grounder. Dickerson is watching Hoskins’ head the whole time. He wants Hoskins to be in a more balanced position.

“We’re together all the time,” Dickerson said. “He works his tail off. Me and him will yell at each other sometimes, which is fine. He’s hard on himself. I’m telling you, he’s hard, hard, hard on himself. And a lot of times that might lock him up too. Trying not to make a mistake sometimes is as bad as not caring.”

They’ve talked about this.

“Everybody here wants you to care,” Hoskins said. “But you can also get in your own way. I’ve seen it, you’ve seen it, everybody in this room has seen it. And probably done it.

“He always just makes little comments. Like simple reminders. ‘Yeah, care. This s— is important. But don’t get in your way.’ We’re doing the work. There’s talent there. Trust that the talent will show up because the work has been done.”

This will be met with skepticism because Hoskins turns 30 on Friday and he is what he is: a productive but streaky hitter who won’t be an above-average defender at first base. But Hoskins has been with the Phillies longer than any other position player on the team and that familiarity can breed myopic views.

Dickerson thought about that, too, this winter.

“I’ll tell you this,” he said. “If you go out there and you go throughout the league, there’s 30 first basemen, and you keep on going and digging. And, before you know it, you can find a lot of pimples on all those guys. And then you’ll get a guy here and you’ll be like, ‘Damn, we miss Rhys.’”

Hoskins is a free agent after this season. He understands his future might be elsewhere, but he cares about this thing right now. It has to be better at first base in 2023. He saw Dickerson in February and it started then. “Let’s go to work,” Hoskins told him. They are optimistic about the progress.

It’s not going to be perfect. Far from it. But the fixable things can be fixed with good work.

“I trust Rhys as much as I trust anybody because he puts the work in,” Dickerson said. “And I know any given day, every game he plays, we’re going to get the best version of him. Because he works at it. When a player applies himself, and works at it, I’ll go to war with him. I mean, that’s just what it is.”

“We’re together all the time,” Bobby Dickerson said of Rhys Hoskins. “He works his tail off.” (Eric Hartline / USA Today)

Dickerson has asked Hoskins to be deliberate with his every move during the morning drills. “We’re over-exaggerating the glove presentation,” Dickerson said. “Trying to get it earlier.” It felt weird to Hoskins. It was so pronounced. Even a drill designed to improve Hoskins’ transfer from his glove to his throwing hand. Too many times, Hoskins fumbled the ball.

“Dude, just look at the ball,” Dickerson said to him, “And then grab it.”

In Hoskins’ mind, that was going to take too much time. Catch the ball, move your feet, look at the ball, throw the ball. No way. Then he started doing it — the cue became embedded in his head — and it worked.

“But,” Hoskins said, “nobody’s probably said anything to me or anybody here about that type of thing since we were learning the game.”

The basics, when delivered with the proper messaging, can be powerful.

“So far, I think it’s helping me slow stuff down,” Hoskins said. “Just like with anything that you mess up and fail with, you can lose a little confidence in it, right? That’s either going to snowball, or with some of the work we’ve done in the spring, we’re hoping I have this simple cue that can just get me right back into cruise control.”

It all felt robotic to Hoskins when he did it in drills and in Grapefruit League games. But the feedback from Dickerson was good. Dickerson showed Hoskins video clips from different angles.

“Dude,” Dickerson said, “it doesn’t look robotic.”

Hoskins agreed.

“It’s the simple stuff, right?” Hoskins said. “That’s what kills me and kills everybody. When that stuff cleans up, you probably get a pretty good product.”

It’s a goal worth working toward.

(Top photo: Nathan Ray Seebeck / USA Today)

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