What Should the Phillies Do With Brandon Marsh?

Last week, when the Phillies were shut out by the Miami Marlins, I, among many others, suggested that Rob Thomson needed to make a change to his lineup. At the time, my suggestion was to take Brandon Marsh out of the lineup and move Trea Turner down. Thomson chose, instead, to take Turner out for a day. Turner came back and was smoking hot for four games, making Thomson look like a genius.

But it seems as if those four games were just a sugar rush, because Turner went right back to providing fruitless at bats in Atlanta. Hell, the whole team did.

As for Marsh, it hasn’t gotten better. Only worse. Yeah, there was a home run against Washington. Yes, there was the game-winning sacrifice fly in Atlanta the other night. But otherwise it’s been brutal.

He’s struck out 20 times in his last 39 at bats. That’s remarkably bad.

While the frequency of those K’s, either forward or backward, is slightly less as you include a larger sample size, it’s really not good since he returned from a hamstring injury on June 15th. In that time Marsh is slashing .209/.283/.373 for a .656 OPS and he’s struck out 70 times in 158 at bats, or 44.3% of them.

I’m not sure if he’s even playable right now for a team that needs to get their act together:

Brandon Marsh would still strikeout https://t.co/bbERGE2nbq

— 4MT (@4mtboiiiiiii) August 23, 2024

Which is why sitting Marsh is not the step I’m advocating for this time. I mean, yeah… he should be on the bench – even against righties. The Phillies will tout that he has a .745 OPS this season against righties, so that’s worth putting in the lineup, but I’ll counter with what his numbers have been against righties since coming back from the injury:

50 games, 154 plate appearances, .191/.273/.368; .641 OPS, 62 strikeouts (40.3%)

That’s who he’s supposed to be good against.

It’s become a nightmare for Marsh, who puts in the work every day to correct it, and just hasn’t been able to get it done, allowing the frustration to mount.

The Phillies gambled at the deadline that he would be fine and even basically shifted him back to centerfield and taking away at bats from Johan Rojas with the addition of Austin Hays to be the everyday left fielder.

Hays got hurt and Marsh has gotten worse. It’s to the point were Rojas is the best regular option of all the possibilities for two outfield positions. And if that’s the case, it’s a bit of a black hole offensively.

Weston Wilson has put together some really good swings for the Phillies – especially against left-handed pitchers – so there should be a confidence in him against lefties. But you also don’t want to play him too much for fear of over-exposure. We’ve seen this in the not-too-distant past with Edmundo Sosa.

And evaluation of Hays is incomplete at the moment. He’s not played enough, but has looked OK when he has, and the Phillies view him as an everyday player.

So maybe, upon his return to the team in Kansas City tonight, it’s Hays in left, Rojas in center and Marsh on the bench. Fine.

While it’s likely that Cal Stevenson gets sent back down to make room for Hays – and that is the right roster move – maybe Marsh could also use a reset.

Why not send Marsh down to Triple-A to try and work on what he has to work on and build back some confidence, and then bring him back in two or three weeks for the end of the regular season and the playoffs?

Let him try and rectify things in a low-pressure environment against inferior pitching. It’s worked for guys before to get that reset. There’s no question the Phillies are going to need Marsh in October, so why not use up one of the two options he has left (per Fangraphs) and try and get him right?

Brandon Marsh needs to find himself in AAA. Not even saying that in an angry way. Genuinely think he needs that.

— Phillies Baseball Talk (@FightinsTalk) August 23, 2024

Rojas can play centerfield on the regular. If you send down Marsh instead of Stevenson then you have a backup centerfielder for the next couple weeks. If not, maybe you send Marsh down and recall Kody Clemens, so you have another left-handed bat available and Hays can slide over to centerfield if you need to pinch hit for Rojas.

The point is the Phillies need Marsh (and others) to get their swagger back. And the opportunity exists to get him to find that groove away from the pressure of a pennant race. Take advantage of it:

Where’s this Brandon Marsh at I know he’s in there somewhere pic.twitter.com/ZWt6C3k31h

— (@CookedBy1K) August 23, 2024

It also might benefit the rest of the team, too. To this point, changes in the clubhouse have only been on the periphery. Nothing has happened to the core of the team other than a game off here and there.

But if you send out one of the core guys, even for just a couple weeks, it could wake this team from its doldrums.

Now some might say that seems like a panic move. Some might say you don’t want to look like a desperate team. But the truth is when you have the third-worst record in the sport since the All-Star Break, have fallen out of the top seed in the N.L., are in danger of not getting a bye and having to play a best-of-3 first round series in a year where the expectations were through the roof, a desperate measure should be in order.

Otherwise the Phillies are putting themselves at further risk of becoming a precautionary tale of being too stubborn in their own philosophy, to be told for years to come.

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