Edmundo Sosa’s All-Star Season*

I made a baseball card. Don’t worry about my grade-school-level graphic design skills. It’s not like I’m trying to sell this template to Topps. I just figured that if I was going to use the “guess the mystery player” lead-in, I might as well try to make it a little more visually appealing. So, I made a baseball card. And I’d like you to try to guess the player to whom it belongs:

It’s not Dansby Swanson. It’s not Marcus Semien in an even-numbered year. But those are probably the two best guesses you could make without additional context (such as the headline, but humor me here), which is precisely why I wanted to play this game – and write this article. Here’s how 2024 Swanson and 2024 Semien stack up to my mystery player. Keep in mind, the time frame for the mystery player’s stats is another part of the mystery:

Swanson is a two-time All-Star and a two-time Gold Glove winner. He made $26 million last season. Semien is a three-time All-Star, a two-time Silver Slugger, and a Gold Glove winner. He also made $26 million last season. This mystery player must be pretty good, huh?

Just for fun, I’d like to offer up one more comparison before I move on from this rhetorical game. Here’s how the mystery player stacks up to another highly paid All-Star middle infielder, Trea Turner:

This mysterious stat line, the one that compares so favorably to the recent numbers of Swanson, Semien, and Turner, belongs to none other than utilityman Edmundo Sosa. The numbers on the baseball card I made are his career stats as a member of the Philadelphia Phillies:

Sosa, now 29, signed with the Cardinals as an international free agent out of Panama in 2012. Although he was never a top-top prospect, he looked like a high-probability major leaguer from a young age, thanks to his sure-handed defense at shortstop and a stronger bat than one typically sees from such a capable fielder. He ranked somewhere between seventh and 16th on our Cardinals prospect lists each year from 2016-21. As a rookie, Sosa took 326 trips to the plate in the 2021 season, producing a .735 OPS and a 102 wRC+. Splitting his time between shortstop (518 innings) and second base (138 2/3 innings) with a handful of games at third base sprinkled in (31 1/3 innings), he put up 5 OAA and 11 DRS. Altogether, he finished with 2.0 WAR, sixth most among NL rookies. Prorated over a complete season, that’s a four-win campaign.

Yet, St. Louis soon seemed to sour on Sosa after his slow start the subsequent season. (Alliteration is fun!) On July 30, 2022, when he had a 47 wRC+ in 53 games, the Cardinals traded him to the Phillies in exchange for left-handed reliever JoJo Romero. At the time, it seemed like a perfectly straightforward swap of low-impact role-players: a southpaw middle reliever for a glove-first utilityman.

Two years, eight months, and five days later, Sosa has racked up a full season’s worth of plate appearances with the Phillies. The product of that playing time? An All-Star-caliber quasi-season. Even with the caveat that it took him parts of four years to put up those numbers, that’s pretty darn great. It’s also pretty darn surprising. It’s surprising enough that I bet some of you reading this article were genuinely stumped by the “guess the mystery player” game, even though Sosa’s name and picture at the top of the page should have given it away. Bench players don’t usually put up All-Star numbers. That’s why they’re bench players, not All-Stars.

I don’t mean to say that Sosa is truly an All-Star-caliber player whom the Phillies have foolishly confined to the bench. There are good reasons why his numbers from across several seasons don’t mean as much as they would if they’d come in a single year. You can’t just extrapolate a part-time player. For one thing, the righty-batting Sosa has wide platoon splits, which Matthew Trueblood recently wrote about for Baseball Prospectus. For his career, Sosa has a 92 wRC+ against righties and a 112 wRC+ against lefties. Since he joined the Phillies, those splits are even more extreme; he has an 84 wRC+ in 364 plate appearances against same-handed pitching and a 140 wRC+ in 285 plate appearances against southpaws. It’s not as if the Phillies have heavily shielded Sosa from right-handed pitching, but still, he’d have to deal with unfavorable platoon matchups more often if he were a full-time player.

It is also important to consider that Sosa has racked up a fair amount of his innings as a defensive replacement. He’s played 221 games in the field for the Phillies, but has only started about three-quarters of them. That has allowed him to compile 1,511 2/3 defensive innings, about 75 more than you could reasonably expect from any player in a 162-game season. So, he has accumulated value somewhat disproportionately; his elite defense is carrying a bit more weight in his WAR than it would if he were playing every day.

Even so, the overarching point remains: Sosa has been good for Philadelphia. Really good. There’s a pretty compelling case that he’s been the most valuable part-time player in the league. Since his first day with the Phillies, he is one of 318 players to take at least 600 trips to the plate. Among that group, he ranks 26th in WAR per plate appearance. All 25 players ranked ahead of him are unquestionably starters – and not just any starters. Twenty-three of them have been All-Stars, and the only ones who haven’t are Gold Glove-winning catchers Patrick Bailey and Cal Raleigh. Now, to be fair, using plate appearances as a denominator slightly overstates Sosa’s value, given the disproportionate relationship between his plate appearances and defensive innings. On the other hand, he still ranks among the top quartile of players in WAR per game. That calculation severely undervalues his production, considering that only three-quarters of his appearances have been starts.

Here’s another way to think about how much value Sosa has provided as a part-time player. Among players with as many or fewer plate appearances (649) than Sosa since he joined the Phillies, only two have amassed more WAR: Wander Franco and Jackson Merrill. Only five others have even come within one win of Sosa. Similarly, among players with as many or fewer games played than Sosa (223), only seven have recorded more WAR – Mike Trout, Franco, Merrill, Gabriel Moreno, Oneil Cruz, Byron Buxton, and Jake Rogers – while only nine others have come within one win. Simply put, most guys who play as infrequently as Sosa aren’t anywhere near as productive.

Sosa is productive in a lot of different ways, too. He isn’t an all-around talent. His arm strength and contact skills are lacking, and, most importantly, he can’t draw a walk to save his life. Since he became a Phillie, his 3.5% walk rate ranks last in the National League (min. 600 PA). However, he’s a well-rounded player who offers value with his bat, his glove, and his legs. Indeed, he provides a blend of power, speed, and defense that few others bring to the table. During his tenure with the Phillies, Sosa has hit 19 home runs, stolen 14 bases, and accrued 13 OAA. Over the past five full seasons, only 12 players have had a year with at least 19 home runs, 14 stolen bases, and even 12 OAA (I brought that number down to adjust for Sosa’s additional defensive innings). Here’s the complete list:

Yes, it took Sosa multiple seasons to accomplish what those other players pulled off in just one. Nevertheless, the fact that his recent numbers put him in any sort of discussion involving that list of names is another great illustration of just how well he has performed.

On top of all that, I have to mention Sosa’s aptitude for getting hit by pitches, a skill that helps him compensate, at least a little bit, for his inability to draw a walk. In his rookie season, he was hit 17 times in just 326 plate appearances. No player (min. 300 PA) has been beaned at a higher rate in any season since. Even Sosa himself has not been able to maintain that absurd HBP rate, but he has been hit on 19 occasions in his time with the Phillies. On a per-PA basis, that’s the third-highest rate in the National League (min. 600 PA).

Since he arrived in Philadelphia, Sosa has been making his case for more playing time. That’s been especially true over the first week of 2025. The Phillies are 5-1 to start the season, and Sosa has been their most pivotal player. He has only played in four of their six games, but he leads the team in hits (9), WAR (0.5), and WPA (0.75). He also ranks among the top 10 NL hitters in all three categories. Needless to say, he won’t maintain his 318 wRC+ all season. If I had to guess, I’d also take the under on his putting up another 4.7 WAR over his next full season’s worth of plate appearances. Still, there is no denying how much he has done for his club, not only over the past week, but over the past two years, eight months, and five days.

The Phillies had eight All-Stars last year. Thirteen players on their roster have made an All-Star team. They have the third-highest payroll in the league and seven players making upwards of $20 million per year. The reigning NL East winners are loaded with star power. Yet, since Sosa came along, no one currently in this organization has been more valuable per plate appearance or batter faced (min. 100 PA/TBF) than the utility infielder. And that’s why I made him a baseball card.