Eric Hosmer's Breakout Postseason May Be Turning Point in MLB Career

This postseason has been Eric Hosmer's coming-out party. More precisely, it's been nothing short of the third big league breakout for the Kansas City Royals first baseman, whose October offensive outburst has helped propel his franchise to its first World Series since 1985.

So much of the attention has been on the Royals' team speed, elite defense and shutdown bullpen during their improbable, thrilling playoff run through the Oakland Athletics in the American League Wild Card Game to the Division Series victory over the top-seeded Los Angeles Angels to the four-game sweep of the Baltimore Orioles to win the pennant.

But this much is clear: Kansas City wouldn't be here without Hosmer.

To that point, he's batting an incredible .371/.500/.629 in 10 games to go with six runs, eight RBI and four extra-base hits, including a pair of homers that came in consecutive contests and proved to be the winning runs in both Games 2 and 3 of the ALDS.

Add in the opposite-field triple in the bottom of the 12th that put him in position to score the game-tying run in the Wild Card Game, as well as a few key defensive plays, and Hosmer has had his share of memorable moments this month, too.

Hosmer also has walked nine times in his 44 trips to the plate, an indication that he's being patient and seeing the ball well. That also explains how he literally is getting on base half the time, which reinforces the fact that his 1.129 OPS is the highest of anyone who has played more than one playoff series.

Quite frankly, Hosmer has been the best bat in baseball this month.

All of which has raised the possibility, the hope yet again that something has clicked and the proverbial light switch has flicked on for Hosmer.

Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press

This is a former No. 3 overall draft pick in 2008 who broke into the bigs and looked like the real deal in 2011.

Entering that year, Hosmer ranked as the top prospect in a Royals system that was arguably the best and deepest in memory, as Baseball America noted. Kansas City placed nine players in the publication's annual Top 100 prospects, and Hosmer checked in at No. 8 overall.

But Hosmer's career path since arriving, as well as his ascension to the majors along the way, has been anything but linear. More like undulating waves, actually.

Hosmer has been up and down throughout his time as a professional, both in the majors and as he climbed through the minors, as John Sickels of Minor League Ball writes. He's shown a tendency to be consistently inconsistent.

After debuting in early May of 2011, Hosmer posted a .293/.334/.465 line, which earned him a third-place finish in the AL Rookie of the Year voting and portended good things to come.

Except Year 2 went about as poorly as anyone could have imagined, with Hosmer slashing just .232/.304/.359. Granted, part of that can be attributed to a .255 batting average on balls in play that ranked as the seventh-worst mark in the majors in 2012.

By 2013, no one was quite sure what to make of this one-time elite prospect who started off strong, only to fizzle when expectations were sky high. Was Hosmer the stud in the making he appeared to be as a rookie...or the dud nobody saw coming as a sophomore?

Turns out, he was both in his third season. Here's a breakdown of his statistics between his first 64 games of 2013 and his final 95, from June 16 through year's end:

TIMEFRAME	G	PA	BA/OBP/SLG	XBH (HR)	R	RBI	K%
April 1 - June 15	64	259	.269/.329/.350	14 (2)	29	23	16.2%
June 16 - Sept. 28	95	421	.321/.368/.506	40 (15)	57	56	13.8%

Arbitrary starting and ending points come into play, but if that doesn't look like a young player "getting it" right before our eyes, what does?

Surely, then, 2014 was going to be The Year—capital "T," capital "Y"—for Hosmer to rise into the ranks of baseball's best and play like the perennial All-Star or even MVP candidate he had the potential to become when he was among the tippy-top prospects only a few years before.

Not quite. Again, Hosmer didn't do much of anything over the first half and wound up posting a very worrisome, 2012-like .246/.288/.343 triple slash through June.

Then, just as the lefty-swinger started to turn it around by hitting .366/.425/.535 in July, he fractured his right hand on a hit-by-pitch and re-aggravated it with a checked swing a week later.

"[Hosmer] was hot and any time you lose a player of his caliber, it hurts," Yost said at the time per Dick Kaegel of MLB.com.

To Hosmer's credit, he made it back relatively soon after missing only a month, and he got right back to hitting to the tune of .290/.347/.495 in September. That sets the stage for what he's done in October.

It's fair to have doubts about Hosmer given all he has—and hasn't—done in the majors to now.

He is, however, still just 24 years old—he turns 25 on Friday, Oct. 24—so there's time for Hosmer to develop and get better with the bat in the majors. Remember, he debuted as a 21-year-old, which is extremely early for most players, even big-time prospects like he was. That has forced Hosmer to do a lot of learning on the job at baseball's highest level.

That is at least part of why Hosmer's career across parts of four big league seasons feels like a disappointment so far. But it wouldn't be surprising at all to see him figure things out and turn into an above-average all-around player—just a few years later than most were expecting or hoping.

It's not like that's never happened before in Kansas City, right? (Cough, Alex Gordon, cough.)

If nothing else, Hosmer has been the bat that has pushed the Royals to this point in the postseason, regaining some of the luster lost along the way with a disappointing 2014—and 2012 and two-plus months of 2013 before that.

As manager Ned Yost said via T.R. Sullivan of MLB.com after the Royals got past the Angels in the ALDS:

"

I told the boys with about a week to go [in the regular season], look, some of you guys haven't had years that you really wanted to have, but [when] we get to the playoffs, nobody is going to remember that, and we've gotten to the playoffs now. Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, these kids are all stepping up big-time and putting us in the position that we're in now.

"

Maybe the smart take, then, is simply to be satisfied with what Hosmer has done in the playoffs—with what he is doing right now—and not try to read too far into it as a predictor of what comes next in 2015.

But a breakout performance like the one Hosmer is putting together this October pretty much guarantees that the baseball world will be fascinated by him come next March, expecting and hoping for big things. Yet again.

Maybe for Hosmer, this third breakout will be the charm.

Statistics are accurate through Oct. 22 and courtesy of MLB.com, Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs, unless otherwise noted.

To talk baseball or fantasy baseball, check in with me on Twitter: @JayCat11.