The Phillies expected more from Bryson Stott and Brandon Marsh. Here’s how they’re dealing with ‘a game of failure.’

Kyle Schwarber sat at his locker the other day and tried to contextualize the regression — offensively, at least — of two of the Phillies’ youngest players. So he thought of the first 24 months of his major-league career, which felt like a nausea-inducing ride on Space Mountain.

“I was on top of the world,” Schwarber said, “and then I was in triple A.”

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The point is, player development isn’t linear. Scouts and executives often say players don’t always progress in a straight line. Backsliding is common; adjustments are constant.

Which brings us to Bryson Stott and Brandon Marsh.

The Phillies’ rise to World Series contention was built on the one-two pitching punch of Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola and the highly paid, star-studded positional core that surrounds Bryce Harper. But Stott and Marsh, along with Alec Bohm, became central cast members in the deep postseason runs of the last two (red) Octobers.

Last season, the young trio even carried the Phillies for weeks at a time. Stott, in particular, batted .280, led the team with 4.3 wins above replacement (according to Baseball-Reference), and was a Gold Glove finalist at second base.

It was reasonable to expect each to take another leap this year.

If only baseball always worked that way.

Bohm, 28, has developed into an All-Star doubles machine who bats cleanup and protects Harper in the order. Meanwhile, Stott and Marsh have largely cratered. Stott is hitting for neither average (.234 entering the weekend series in Kansas City) nor power (nine homers, .349 slugging); Marsh is striking out in 33.9% of his plate appearances — 39.8% since the All-Star break, an alarmingly high rate.

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The 26-year-olds’ struggles at the plate have caused them to lose playing time. Marsh is a platoon outfielder, starting against righties, sitting against lefties. Stott, also a left-handed hitter, has started only twice against a non-opener lefty since the middle of June.

Their most consistent contributions: mischievously spilling cups of water over teammates’ heads during on-field TV interviews after victories.

“From an offensive perspective, I would have anticipated more,” Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said this week. “Now, we still like them a great deal. But it’s one of those where they haven’t taken as big a step forward as what we would’ve anticipated and I think what they would’ve anticipated.

“It’s part of the growth process until somebody gets established. I’ve had a lot of players that have been very good players and you end up having to even send them to the minors, and then they come back and they play very well. It’s just ups and downs that take part in people’s careers.”

Just as the Cubs did with Schwarber three months into the 2017 season, when he was batting .171 and stacking strikeouts. This week, the Cardinals optioned young infielder Nolan Gorman amid a downturn in his third major-league season.

The Phillies haven’t reached that point. Because the objective is to win the World Series, and Stott and Marsh continue to save runs on defense. They also have been winning players. To wit: They came off the bench in the eighth inning of a tie game Wednesday night in Atlanta and hit deep fly balls to help manufacture the go-ahead run.

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So the Phillies are focused instead on getting Stott and Marsh on track. Stott’s problems are related to settling on a plate approach; Marsh’s are more about mechanics, such as stride direction and staying back on pitches to make more contact.

It’s a work in progress. But shouldn’t there be more progress by now?

“I wish that was the case,” Schwarber said. “Not everything’s going to be picture-perfect. There’s going to be things you’re going to go through and you’re going to have to figure out.”

Here’s how Stott and Marsh are trying to make sense of it.

Last season, half of Stott’s 164 hits came with two strikes, tying him with Royals star shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. for the most in baseball. Stott was so comfortable hitting in two-strike counts that the Phillies had a running joke in the dugout.

“He’d get 0-2,” manager Rob Thomson said, “and everybody’d go, ‘Well, he’s got ’em right where he wants ’em.’”

But there’s a reason the league average with two strikes is only .169. It’s a tough way for a hitter to live. So in spring training, the Phillies told Stott to be more aggressive early in the count, citing his postseason grand slam against Marlins lefty Andrew Nardi as an example of the damage he could do on first-pitch fastballs.

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Stott mostly has adhered to those instructions. Through Thursday, he had swung at 20.4% of first pitches, up from 16.4% last year. He has 91 hits, only 39 with two strikes.

But opponents have taken notice, too. Whereas Stott got more early-count fastballs last season and breaking stuff later in his at-bats, he has seen the inverse. Pitchers are starting him out with slow stuff, then coming with heaters, a strategy that has kept Stott guessing.

“I’m swinging more early and swinging more in hitter’s counts, and it’s a lot more curveballs and sliders and the ‘surprise-me’ heater late,” Stott said. “Just with it being a surprise-me pitch, it’s not supposed to be thrown in that count, per se. It’s just getting back to maybe sitting soft early and then gearing up late, which is weird to say because you don’t want to do that normally.

“You’re so geared up for a fastball and they throw two curveballs in a row, then you’re like, ‘Well, do I stay on the fastball? Do I go somewhere else?’ That’s where you get the surprise-me heater, and it’s like, ‘OK, I could’ve stayed on the fastball.’ But then you stay on the fastball and they don’t throw you one. It’s just a cat-and-mouse game all day.”

If your head hurts, well, imagine how Stott’s must feel.

Maybe Stott should revert to last year’s approach. Whatever it takes to get more fastballs in a hitter’s count. When he’s ahead in the count, he’s batting .302 against fastballs; when he’s behind, he’s hitting .206.

“They’ve talked about it,” Thomson said. “There’s got to be a balance where you’re aggressive at times to kind of scare them out of the strike zone early in the count, but at the same time, be able to chew up pitches, work the count, and get pitches that you can hit or you can handle.“

It hasn’t helped that Stott largely has been luckless. His hardest-hit ball of the season, a 109.8 mph line drive Aug. 7 at Dodger Stadium, went right to perfectly positioned second baseman Gavin Lux. It’s a common outcome. In the ninth inning Tuesday, Braves right fielder Ramón Laureano lost a sinking line drive in the lights, slid, and caught it.

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“It feels like when I do square one up, oh well, it’s right to the guy,” said Stott, 128th in OPS (.658) through Thursday among 140 hitters who qualified for the batting title. “Just got to have better aim, I guess. Just one or two dink hits here or there, and I think I’ll be fine.”

That’s been the message from hitting coach Kevin Long, who is pleased with Stott’s swing. Thomson has demonstrated confidence in Stott, too, often batting him fifth or sixth to take advantage of his bat-to-ball skills. Stott strikeout rate (15.9%) is among the Phillies’ lowest.

“I’m not panicked or anything like that,” Stott said. “I know my swing feels good. Hitting coach thinks it’s good. He’s telling me not to change. That’s reassuring. If Topper and Kevin have faith in me, I’d be a fool not to have it in myself.”

With the go-ahead run on third base and one out in the eighth inning Wednesday night, Braves reliever Joe Jiménez threw Marsh four sliders in a row.

“He was trying to get me to chase,” Marsh said. “That’s the smart thing.”

Especially because few players are easier to whiff than Marsh, who had the fifth-highest strikeout rate among hitters with 300 plate appearances through Thursday. But after Marsh swung through two Jiménez sliders, he laid off one that was inside and at his feet. The next one was in the zone, and Marsh lifted a sacrifice fly that scored the deciding run.

Progress. Well, until Thursday night, when he fanned three times, including chasing a dirt-diving curveball with the tying run in scoring position and two out in the seventh inning.

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When Marsh makes contact, good things usually happen. Entering the weekend, he ranked behind only Schwarber among Phillies hitters in average exit velocity (91.9 mph) and fourth in hard-hit rate (47.8%).

But the strikeouts are a killer, especially against left-handed pitching. Even after a few recent hits against lefties, Marsh was 12-for-59 (.203) with two extra-base hits and 27 strikeouts in 67 plate appearances. So, he almost never faces a lefty starter.

It’s not what the Phillies bargained for when they traded touted catcher Logan O’Hoppe to the Angels for Marsh at the deadline in 2022.

Stott and Marsh are close. And while their problems are different, there’s a common thread in being young left-handed hitters trying to navigate the pitfalls of the big leagues. As Marsh put it, “We go through the ups and downs together — and everything in between.”

“You want to improve every single year you play, but there’s very, very few that I feel like that’s happened to,” Marsh said. “It’s a game of failure. It’s a very humbling sport. That’s the beauty of it. All the hard times, when you do succeed, it makes it that much more impactful to yourself.”

And there’s still time for Stott and Marsh to turn it around. If they don’t, it will raise questions about their place in the Phillies’ core. But with September approaching and the postseason after that, the big picture can wait.

“Oh, they’re important parts of our club,” Dombrowski said. “They’re really, really good players. If we’re going to go to places we want to go, they’re very important contributors. And they’ve done fine. They’re OK. But I think we think there’s another step to them, and we haven’t realized that step this year yet.”