A year later, trading for Brandon Marsh is still paying off for the Phillies

PITTSBURGH — If it’s the last week of July, most baseball executives have a one-track mind. Consider how Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski struck up a conversation with Brandon Marsh around the batting cage the other day.

“Can you believe,” Dombrowski said to the Phillies’ biggest addition from the 2022 trade deadline, “that you haven’t even been here a year?”

It really does seem like so much longer. A World Series run will have that effect, especially because Marsh became a cult hero in Philadelphia last October for his Cast Away beard and shoulder-length hair, which is both soaking wet (literally) and on fire (figuratively, given his style of play).

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For the record, though, Wednesday will mark the anniversary of the Phillies’ trading for Marsh, and it comes one day after this season’s deadline. Like last year and the year before, Dombrowski is looking to buy. But no matter what happens by 6 p.m. Tuesday, it won’t be as fascinating as prying the 25-year-old center fielder from the Los Angeles Angels.

Because unlike most deadline deals, Marsh-for-Logan O’Hoppe was a swap of players who are under team control for multiple seasons. And nobody saw it coming. Not the reporters who spend weeks deciphering trade tea leaves. Certainly not Marsh. Not even Dombrowski, rebuffed a few months earlier when he asked Angels counterpart Perry Minasian about Marsh’s availability.

The Phillies made three deadline-day trades last year. The others — reliever David Robertson from the Chicago Cubs for pitching prospect Ben Brown, and back-end starter Noah Syndergaard from the Angels for former No. 1 overall pick/outfielder Mickey Moniak — were classic win-now grabs for veteran players on expiring contracts.

But the Marsh trade represented a play for the future as well as the present. Dombrowski has been at this for more than four decades and with five organizations, and even in his experience, it isn’t often that such opportunities arise in the middle of a season.

“Usually the control players are not as available,” Dombrowski said this week. “Once in a while they are. I go back years ago, we got Craig Counsell [in 1997 with the Florida Marlins] and then also Doug Fister [in 2011 with the Detroit Tigers]. They were controllable players. But those are more the abnormal.

“This is the time of year in which you’re forced to make a decision which direction you’re going to go, and some clubs, if they decide that they’re going to go for the future, they move their veteran players that are potential free agents. Those are the type of players that are generally available. It’s much more the norm than the younger player.”

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It’s too soon to declare a winner in the trade. It might turn out to be a draw. O’Hoppe, a touted 23-year-old catcher, got off to a strong start in his first full major league season before having shoulder surgery in May.

But this much is clear: Trading for Marsh has worked out well enough for the Phillies that its ripple effects may be felt at this year’s deadline, too.

For years, the Phillies hoped Roman Quinn, or Adam Haseley, or Scott Kingery, or Moniak would take over center field. Instead, they kept coming back to Odúbel Herrera. And from 2019 to 2021, they ranked 27th out of 30 teams with a .669 on-base-plus-slugging from their center fielders.

So, before and after the owners’ lockout that disrupted the 2021-22 offseason, the Phillies scoured opposing rosters for potentially available center fielders. They explored a trade with Tampa Bay for Kevin Kiermaier. They asked Arizona about Alek Thomas, Houston about Jose Siri, and the Angels about Marsh.

“They wouldn’t even discuss him at that time,” Dombrowski said.

The Phillies re-signed Herrera to a one-year contract. They tried Matt Vierling in center field. They brought back Quinn and gave Moniak another chance. But through July, Phillies center fielders ranked 28th in OPS (.591) and had as many wins above replacement as Bluto’s grade-point average in Animal House: zero point zero.

Imagine Dombrowski’s reaction, then, when Minasian said last July that he would reconsider moving Marsh, with whom the out-of-contention Angels had grown frustrated because of a soaring strikeout rate.

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“He was persistent that it was going to have to be O’Hoppe, and we were hoping that we wouldn’t have to trade O’Hoppe because we really liked him,” Dombrowski said. “But sometimes you’ve got to give to get, and we knew we have J.T. [Realmuto] signed for three years at that point. It was a situation that just made sense for us because we had a big hole in center field.”

The Angels were at home when Marsh got the news.

“It was a bit of a shock at first,” Marsh said. “Just because that’s the team that drafted me. They saw me as a baby all the way up. They gave me the opportunity to play in the big leagues. I’m not one of those guys on the end of my deal. They still have a lot of time they can use until [free agency] comes for myself. I was super surprised. But I’m super glad everything happened the way it did.”

Marsh, not eligible for free agency until at least after the 2027 season, batted .239/.299/.354 with 21 doubles, five triples, 10 homers, 56 RBIs, a 7.2% walk rate, and a 35.7% strikeout rate in 583 plate appearances for the Angels. In 473 plate appearances for the Phillies entering the weekend, he was a .282/.347/.454 hitter with 27 doubles, eight triples, 11 homers, 52 RBIs, a 9.1% walk rate, and a 30.7% strikeout rate.

Dombrowski said the Phillies believe Marsh has untapped power. Marsh thinks he can have a greater impact by improving his baserunning. Everyone agrees that he hasn’t reached the ceiling of his ability.

“I told him, I said, ‘You’re a young player and you’ve really grown a lot, but you’re going to continue to improve,’” Dombrowski said. “Not only did he come in and establish himself and play well for us in the outfield, but then you go through the postseason and the growth in that regard. You can see he’s continued to get better this year. There’s no doubt he’s made tremendous strides.”

On his first day with the Phillies, Marsh sat down with hitting coach Kevin Long. After studying video of the left-handed hitter’s at-bats dating to rookie ball in 2017, Long decided to widen his stance to get him to use his legs more. They also talked about eliminating his stride to improve his timing.

Sure enough, Marsh began making more contact and hitting the ball harder, especially to right field. And because he was getting a longer look at pitches, he didn’t chase quite as much.

“I think I just started doing a lot less,” Marsh said. “I had to simplify and take a lot of extra movements out of the equation. Just really simplified a lot of things, going A to B. Maybe it was just a change of scenery, new words being spoken to me, new philosophies. It’s been a good recipe over here.”

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Marsh is still susceptible at times to breaking pitches. He also struggles against left-handed pitchers (.227, .679 OPS entering the weekend, compared with .298 and .858 vs. righties). But the Phillies still believe in him as a mostly everyday player.

The question now is whether he will remain in center field. Although Marsh is fine there, he grades out better in left field, according to defensive metrics. And the Phillies are suddenly flush with center fielders. They traded for one-time top prospect Cristian Pache on the eve of opening day. Johan Rojas — like Pache, an elite defender but a work-in-progress right-handed hitter — made his major league debut two weeks ago. Justin Crawford and Emaarion Boyd were drafted last year in the first and 11th rounds, respectively, and are off to good starts in A-ball.

“We are much deeper than we used to be,” Dombrowski said. “[Marsh] definitely can play center field, but he also has had experience in the corners and he has enough offensive ability to play out there. I’m not sure where he’ll play going forward.”

Either way, Marsh’s progress enables the Phillies to narrow their trade-deadline pursuit of a righty-hitting outfielder to the less expensive rental market. It might even compel them, now or in the offseason, to trade from their organizational stockpile in center field for a controllable piece elsewhere. In the starting rotation, perhaps.

After only one year, it’s an entirely different situation — for the Phillies and Marsh.

“It felt like a lot of years in one, for sure,” Marsh said. “But when you say it out loud like that, it definitely feels weird. I’ve been here less than a year, but it’s been a fun one. Everything happens for a reason. Hopefully I can make a home here in Philly because it is one heck of a place to play baseball at.”

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