There's a lot that must feel new about this season for Rhys Hoskins. It's his first as a Milwaukee Brewer, after the emotional rush of the 2022 playoff run with the Philadelphia Phillies, a season-ending ACL tear to start 2023, and the experience of becoming expendable once Bryce Harper moved to first base. Yet with all that has changed, one thing about this season remains exactly the same: Hoskins and the New York Mets really, really don't like each other.
Through two games of 2024, Hoskins and the entire Mets roster have been at each other's throats. It started with a slide into second base Friday afternoon that Mets second baseman Jeff McNeil took objection to. The two jawed back and forth, the benches cleared, and Hoskins hit McNeil with the universal “crybaby” symbol. Naturally, there's already a Jomboy breakdown of the entire sequence, if you want the lip-reading of various parties involved.
Saturday, everything came to a head. Right from the jump, Mets fans were booing Hoskins loudly as soon as he stepped to the plate. On the first pitch of his first at-bat, he smoked a two-run single. Two innings later, he added a two-run bomb to left, his first as a Brewer. He scored the Crew's sixth run of the game on a balk and, at that point, the Mets decided they'd had enough of trying to beat Hoskins the traditional way.
You can't make this stuff up@rhyshoskins https://t.co/iLxprHgwuL pic.twitter.com/ihGIBO8fHX
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) March 30, 2024
Yohan Ramirez fired a pitch behind Hoskins in the top of the seventh, such a blatant incident of throwing at a batter's head that it seemed both dugouts were momentarily stunned. Then manager Pat Murphy got heated, Ramirez was ejected and the stadium erupted into some rather colorful chants involving Hoskins' name. The whole incident was rather ugly, with potential to lead to much uglier consequences if the Brewers end up retaliating in the series finale on Sunday.
Rhys Hoskins' Mets beef goes way back
Bad blood between the Brewers and Mets may be new, but Mets fans have known Hoskins as a thorn in their side for nearly five years now. In April 2019, the Mets' Jacob Rhame threw up-and-in on Hoskins twice, and the next night, Hoskins exacted his revenge in the most cold-blooded way possible: smoking a homer off Rhame, then taking an MLB-record 34.2 seconds to round the bases, a record that as far as the research for this article could prove, still has not been touched. Between that incident and this new one, Citi Field just might have found itself a new Public Enemy No. 1.
If you wanted to take the origins back even further, Hoskins has simply been caught up in a turf war beginning long before his debut in the big leagues, or indeed, life itself. The Mets and Phillies have been in the same division of the National League since 1962, the inaugural season of the Mets franchise. Geographic proximity plus competition is often a formula for intense mutual disgust, and the Mets and Phillies have certainly developed a healthy amount of that.
One brawl in 1990 stands out in particular, a fight that lasted 20 minutes after Doc Gooden was drilled in the leg with a fastball. And baseball is the best simply because you can draw a straight line from that pitch off Gooden's patella to Ramirez's pitch behind Hoskins on Saturday.
What comes next?
After the game Saturday, Mets manager Carlos Mendoza, in the unenviable position of defending an indefensible action from one of his players just two days into the job, swore that Ramirez wasn't trying to hit Hoskins, though admitting that it certainly “looked bad.” Hoskins, in turn, pointed out that an MLB pitcher missing his spot by about the length of a Honda Civic doesn't often happen by coincidence.
“Big leaguers don't miss by eight feet,” Hoskins said to reporters in the Milwaukee locker room. “Whether… it was on purpose or not, I don't really care. That's not up for me to decide. But this game has a way of policing itself for many, many, many years, so let's focus on doing it the right way if we're going to do that.”
In other words: You want to throw at me, fine, plunk me in the ribs and let's move on. But you went for my head, and now all bets are off.
Regardless of the intent Ramirez felt in his heart, the message delivered to Milwaukee in the heat of the moment was not one of honest mistake followed by apology. As a result, New York's hitters are left exposed to retaliation on Sunday, not an exciting prospect considering the plethora of 100-mph fastballs Milwaukee has in their bullpen.
And after Sunday, these two teams don't meet up again until Sept. 27 in Milwaukee. Whatever beef there may be is likely to be settled in the much more immediate future.
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