The Brandon Marsh And Max Kepler Experiment Is Over
Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images
65 games into the 2025 season, and the Philadelphia Phillies are one of baseball’s most confusing teams.
The Phillies currently sit at 37-28 on the year, four games back of the New York Mets for first place in the National League East. It doesn’t sound that bad when you look at it, but then you realize that just two weeks ago, the Phillies were two games ahead of the Mets and have lost nine of their last 10 games.
It’s been a brutal past three series, one in which they were destroyed and swept at home by the Milwaukee Brewers, lost two of three to the Toronto Blue Jays, and most recently, were swept by the 26-40 Pittsburgh Pirates. It’s been up and down over the last six weeks, and previously, it looked like they were spiraling out early. Then May came, and they were back at the top of the MLB. Now, once again, they’re falling down the mountain.
The offense is struggling again. They’ve failed to provide any type of run support, as they’ve scored just one run in four of their last five games, and have only totaled eight runs overall in that span. The pitching staff, most notably the bullpen, hasn’t looked great, but when you lose three straight games by one run, typically, your pitching isn’t the problem.
But what is the cause of the most recent collapse that the team is going through? Is it the sudden injuries to star first baseman Bryce Harper, who was placed on the IL with a right wrist injury? Or is it the team’s inability to adjust to competition and at-bats?
While I think both these things are a factor in why the team is playing great baseball, I think a very key part is the failed experiment that is happening in left and center field with outfielders Brandon Marsh and Max Kepler.
Now, normally, I don’t like to blame individual players when a team is playing badly, especially when it’s a team like the Phillies. The Phillies have invested nearly $1 million in their five veteran offensive players, so while the other four everyday players don’t have to be Hercules and carry this team through a season, you have to get some kind of production out of them.
Alec Bohm and Bryson Stott, two of the Phillies’ younger and less expensive starters, have had issues this year but have shown signs of life. Marsh and Kepler, on the other hand, have been downright awful all season long.
Marsh has been with the Phillies since being traded here from the Los Angeles Angels midway through the 2022 season. He helped man down center field through the Phillies’ improbable 2022 World Series run, but his lack of hitting showed down the stretch of that playoff run. Over the next two years, Marsh did improve his hitting, totaling career highs in home runs and RBIs while also recording his best batting average in a season in 2023.
But as each season would go along, Mars struggled the later the year went, and his inability to hit left-handed pitching made him a huge liability. Johan Rojas, an international prospect the Phillies had, was eventually called up to split time with Marsh in center field, and at times have both of them in the outfield.
Coming into 2025, that was the plan once again to split playing time between the two. While Rojas is not the answer hitting-wise, he at least makes up for it with his incredible defensive ability. Marsh, on the other hand, has been terrible at everything.
In 46 games, Marsh is hitting .216 with two home runs and 12 RBIs. He’s struck out 36 times and has an on-base percentage of 323. His defense is abysmal as well, with multiple sloppy plays in the field, and it often feels like Marsh can’t control the outfield when he’s in center field.
2025 has not been Marsh’s year, and while he still has two years of arbitration remaining, it’s time to cut Marsh loose and find a new answer in the outfield. He’s not doing you any favor sitting at the bottom of the order, making three to four outs a game, especially when none of the outs are even productive.
Somehow, some way, despite all of the struggles from Marsh, he still hasn’t been the most disappointing player of the Phillies this year. That title belongs to the Philles’ big free agent acquisition, Max Kepler.
Kepler was brought over from the Minnesota Twins to bring a mix of power and contact hitting left-handed bat to the middle of the Phillies lineup. Unfortunately, Kepler hasn’t been either of those things for the Phillies.
This season, Kepler’s batting average is a horrendous .208, and his on-base percentage is .295. On top of that, Kepler has hit only six home runs and 21 RBIs. He’s been an absolute dud in the Phillies’ lineup, and at this point, it seems as though he’s only getting playing time when a righty is on the mound.
Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported that the Phillies will be one of the most aggressive teams at the trade deadline this year, with center field and bullpen being the main point of interest.
With the spot the Phillies are in right now, I think it’s time for Dave Dombrowski to hit the reset button with the outfield. Whether it’s making a trade for new players or calling up their young prospects, the Phillies cannot continue to trot out the same old terrible lineup and the same old terrible outfielders.
Former first-round pick Justin Crawford is expected to be the team’s starting center fielder at some point soon, and possibly this season. While some say Crawford isn’t ready for the majors, I saw how much worse he can be than Marsh and Kepler. For the other spot, I think trading for a bat is what is best.
There are a number of names that could fill a spot for the Phillies, and I don’t want to go into depth, but finding a guy who hits for contact is someone I want. I can’t stand watching the bottom of this order strikeout, we have enough guys that do that. The bottom of the order fails to create any type of traction, and it relies on the stars to always be stars. The best players need to hit, but great teams get movement from their players lower in the order. Whether it’s walks or moving runners, just causing the other team to have to work for outs is key.
Guys like Ryan O’Hearn and Jarren Duran are two of the big-ticket guys to look at for this deadline, but just getting anyone at this point would be an improvement. You cannot allow both of these guys to just continue eating at-bats, especially if the rest of this team isn’t going to try and improve the way they play.
If I had a say, I’d call up Crawford to play center field moving forward and trade for a left fielder. I’d keep Rojas as a bench bat as his defense brings him value, but only as that. As for Marsh and Kepler, they both need to go. Marsh can get you some value with his remaining arbitration years, so I’d trade him for whatever you can get. Kepler, on the other hand, I don’t even want him to be the team’s Matt Stairs; cut ties with him and move on.
This experiment is over, don’t try to fix it, it’s done, move on.
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Matt Brown
Matt has been a Philadelphia sports fan all his life and spent four years at Penn State University majoring in Broadcast Journalism and minoring in Sports Studies. He previously covered Penn State’s field hockey, men’s and women’s basketball, and baseball teams while writing for a Penn State blog called Onward State. He has now covered the Phillies, Eagles, and Sixers for Philly Sports Reports since October 2024 and wants to pursue a career in Sports Journalism.
