Is Brandon Marsh another Max Kepler or is he capable of something more for the Phillies?

Six weeks before the first spring training game, let’s play a little game of our own. We’ll call it “Name The Outfielders.”

Based on their numbers vs. left-handed pitching over their first three full major league seasons, name these two outfielders. Ready? Set, go.

(Hint: They will play together this season with the Phillies.)

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Give up?

Brandon Marsh (Player A, 2022-24), meet Max Kepler (Player B, 2016-18).

In many ways, Kepler was Marsh before Marsh, a solid defender and left-handed hitter with decent speed and power and far better results against right-handed pitching. But there was a notable difference: Kepler, from his age-23-to-25 seasons with the Twins, made 437 plate appearances vs. lefties; Marsh, from age 24 to 26 with the Angels and mostly the Phillies, got only 305.

The Twins, like many teams, tend to sit left-handed hitters early in their careers against lefties. But Kepler was the exception. He faced 31 lefty starters as a rookie in 2016, 24 in 2017, and 33 in 2018 despite the paltry production. It wasn’t until the last two seasons, when he ironically hit lefties better than righties, that he became a full-fledged platoon player.

Marsh hasn’t been granted such leeway. Although the Phillies expected him to be an everyday outfielder when they acquired him in a deadline trade in 2022, he actually made fewer starts against lefties last season (16, including three times vs. openers) than the year before (18).

Nothing about Marsh’s performance against lefties warrants additional playing time, but can the Phillies really say for sure that he’ll never hit them without seeing a larger body of work? And after trading catcher Logan O’Hoppe for Marsh, don’t they owe it to themselves to find out?

“Usually I’ve found that the answer becomes clearer to you as time goes on,” president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said. “He has been OK at times; at other times he struggled. But sometimes you probably have to say, ‘Hey, we’re just going to trot him out and let him play every day,' short of the dominating left-hander that you sit anybody against at times. We haven’t reached the set point when we are going to do that, but at some point that’s something we’re just going to have to do and say, ‘OK, here you go. It’s yours.’”

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Last season seemed like the perfect time. Rather than upgrading the outfield in the offseason, the Phillies stuck with Marsh in left field and Johan Rojas in center. But Marsh sat for two of the season’s first three games against Braves lefties Max Fried and Chris Sale and faced only eight of 24 non-opener lefty starters through Memorial Day.

“If you’re a second-division team, yeah, easy to give a guy his at-bats and nurture that and have him become better against lefties,” Joe Maddon, Marsh’s manager with the Angels, said by phone late last season. “When your team’s in the hunt and you’re winning and you’re expected to win, now it becomes a little more difficult. Easier early in the year, but as the season progresses, if you’re not seeing what you need to see, then you’re going to have to make an adjustment, no question.”

The best 50-game start in Phillies history didn’t compel Rob Thomson to write Marsh’s name in the lineup more often against even ordinary lefties. After returning June 15 from a brief stint on the injured list, Marsh didn’t start against a lefty non-opener until July 28.

Maybe it will finally happen this season. But after signing Kepler for $10 million last month, Dombrowski said the Phillies’ plan is “to have him play every day” in left field, even though the Twins finally stopped doing so last year. Marsh will slide back over to center field, where he figures to be at least the busier half of a timeshare with Rojas.

Kepler batted .203 with a .595 OPS against lefties in 2016 and only got worse in 2017 (.152, .453). In 2018, then-Twins manager Paul Molitor defended his decision to stick with Kepler on an everyday basis by maintaining that he wanted to build the young outfielder’s confidence.

“He’ll be the first to tell you it got in his head a little bit [in 2017],” Molitor told reporters in May 2018. “People talked about it every time we faced a lefty. Sometimes he’d play, and sometimes he wouldn’t. He had a nice camp facing lefties, and he’s just been able to carry it over.”

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It worked for at least a couple of years. Kepler improved to .245/.745 against lefties in 2018 and .293/.880 in 2019, by far the best overall year of his career, before regressing and falling into a platoon.

Maybe a similar commitment to a run of playing time against lefties could help Marsh. Maybe not. A refined plate approach surely couldn’t hurt, according to Dombrowski, who said the Phillies want Marsh to hit the ball to left field more often, especially against lefties.

“He used the opposite field more vs. left-handers [last season], and he needs to do that if he’s going to hit them effectively,” Dombrowski said. “I know he’s been here three years, but that’s still sort of a learned process. … But yeah, that time will come. At some time, he’s just going to have to get that opportunity, there’s no question.”

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