The encouraging developments of Phillies' Brandon Marsh

Just as the trade deadline was approaching last year, the Phillies sent catching prospect Logan O’Hoppe to the Angels in order to acquire center fielder Brandon Marsh. The latter was one of the top prospects in the league a few years ago but was relatively overshadowed on an Angels team that had stars like Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. Marsh was perhaps best known for trying to make his head suit his surname, as he didn’t do too much to stand out with the bat.

Making his debut in 2021, he got into 70 games and took 260 trips to the plate. He struck out in 35% of those, walked in 7.7% of them and hit just a pair of home runs. He finished that year with a .254/.317/.356 batting line and an 85 wRC+, indicating he was 15% below league average. Up until the trade last year, it was more of the same. In 323 plate appearances for the Halos prior to the deal, he struck out 36.2% of the time, walked at a 6.8% clip and slashed .226/.284/.353 for a 79 wRC+.

The move to the Phillies seems to have been a turning point, however. His walk rate actually dropped to 4.3% after coming to Philadelphia last year, but his strikeout also dipped to 29.7%. That was still much higher than league average but a noticeable improvement from his own track record. That led to a .288/.319/.455 batting line and 114 wRC+. Here in 2023, he’s off to a tremendous .314/.402/.578 start and a 164 wRC+.

There’s one big caveat to throw out here, as Marsh currently has a .444 batting average on balls in play that no hitter could sustain. Last year’s league leader, for instance, was Paul Goldschmidt and his .368 mark. Once Marsh sees his BABIP figure regress, his overall numbers won’t be quite so gaudy. But digging under the hood reveals there are still plenty of things to be encouraged by. He’s striking out at a 29.9% clip that is definitely still high but more manageable than the roughly 35% clip he was at previously. He’s also walking at an amazing 12% clip, well above this year’s 8.8% league average. Considering how rarely he took free passes before, that’s an excellent sign.

The batted ball metrics also shed some positive light on the better results, as basically everything has improved relative to last year. His barrel rate is up from 7.4% to 10.4%. His average exit velocity was 89.2 mph last year but is at 92 mph in 2023. His hard-hit rate has gone from 38.2% to 47.8%. It’s still a fairly small sample of 117 plate appearances but he’s striking out less, walking more, hitting the ball harder and doing so more often. And it doesn’t seem to have come out of nowhere.

Back in October, when the Phillies were in the World Series, Marsh and hitting coach Kevin Long spoke to Sam Blum of The Athletic about the changes that had been made to his swing. “I devised a game plan on what I was going to do with his swing,” Long said. “And the mechanics of his swing. I always start by getting guys closer to the hitting position than further away. So we spread him out. We got him into his legs. It worked.”

All of these offensive improvements are a great coup since Marsh was already a valuable contributor as a glove-first center fielder. Defensive Runs Saved doesn’t seem to like him in center much, putting him slightly below average in each of his three seasons thus far. Ultimate Zone Rating has him in the positive range, though, and Outs Above Average has him at +5 through 1,251 innings. Marsh is also ranked in the 88th percentile in terms of sprint speed and has 17 stolen bases in his career thus far.

With all of those traits, FanGraphs calculated him as having produced 2.4 wins above replacement in 204 games over 2021 and 2022, even while hitting at a subpar rate. Now with much better offense this year, he’s already at 1.3 fWAR in just 33 games, more than halfway to his previous total in a fraction of the time. As mentioned earlier, he’s due for a bit of regression, but there are reasons to suspect he’ll eventually settle somewhere that’s much better than his previous work.

The 25-year-old came into this year with one year and 78 days of service time, meaning he won’t qualify for arbitration until after 2024 and isn’t slated for free agency until after 2027. For a Phillies team that has spent big on players including Bryce Harper, Trea Turner and Nick Castellanos, and would also like to get Aaron Nola signed to an extension, getting big value out of an overlooked player like Marsh is an important victory.