How Brandon Marsh is working toward getting back to being a ‘bad, bad dude’ at the plate

This has been a weird — and difficult — time for Brandon Marsh. He is striking out at a clip of 33% this season, and 40% this month. Since Aug. 1, he has gone 4-for-7 with one strikeout against lefties and 3-for-33 with 17 strikeouts against righties.

Marsh sees most of his playing time against right-handed pitching, so the sample size against lefties isn’t very big. But he did find it unusual that he felt more comfortable in the box against left-handed pitching, a group that he historically struggled to hit against.

“I was under fastballs and under off-speed pitches, too,” Marsh said. “I actually felt pretty comfortable off of every lefty I saw. It was the righties who were giving me trouble.

“That’s when I knew something was wrong.”

Marsh got in the cage with hitting coach Kevin Long before Wednesday’s game. They reviewed film of his recent at-bats. Nothing obvious jumped out at first — not mechanically, at least — but then they took a deeper look.

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They realized Marsh’s direction was not consistent. Sometimes, he’d be facing toward the shortstop or the second baseman, when they wanted him to be consistently hitting it up through the middle.

They simplified his pregame work. Marsh brought back a drill he’d used in spring training, that he picked up in the offseason.

“It just puts my body in a really good position to attack the baseball,” Marsh said. “It’s as simple as loading and landing and stopping, and rotating your backside and stopping, and then going, as opposed to everything going at once.”

The results were immediate. Marsh went 2-for-4 on Wednesday, with both hits going to the opposite field. His two singles clocked in at 105 mph. He also hit an 108 mph groundout in the second inning.

“When he [goes the other way], it tells me he’s staying on the ball,” said manager Rob Thomson. “He was flatter yesterday, he wasn’t as uphill as he has been. That’s been something they’ve really been working hard on.”

The Phillies are hoping it is the start of something good for the left fielder. Marsh has hit .179/.248/.358 with 38 strikeouts over his last 30 games entering Thursday. He’s hit .239/.316/.397 on the season.

But numbers aside, Marsh said he wasn’t feeling right.

“It was more of a feel thing,” he said. “I felt like I was seeing pitches great, and I would go to swing, and I would look down at my bat, and be like, ‘How in the world am I losing my barrel this much? On a pitch right here?’

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“I’m still learning, still trying to get back to where I want to be. Yesterday went really well. I feel like we just simplified. I feel like I’m a just-dumb-enough hitter. And I live by that term. So maybe overcomplicated it in my own head and it translated out here on the field, and it wasn’t great.”

Marsh says he will continue to add the drill into his pregame routine. He thinks it will help make his direction more consistent. He has a specific goal in mind for the rest of the year.

“I’d like to get to April Marsh,” he said. “I like April Marsh. I just feel like a bad dude in April; I’ve got to get back to feeling like a bad, bad dude.”

The Phillies wouldn’t complain. Marsh hit .269/.314/.505 with six home runs last April.

Thomson announced that Ranger Suárez (lower back soreness) would throw an 80-pitch total bullpen/BP session on Sunday, but it’s possible that gets moved up to Saturday. It’ll depend on how Suárez is feeling. It’s possible he will return to the rotation when the team is in Kansas City next week. … Austin Hays (left hamstring strain) did some high-intensity running on Thursday. The goal is for him to hit on the field on Friday and participate in defensive drills. The Phillies hope to have him run the bases this weekend.