Sep 11, 2024; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Johan Rojas (18) looks on as he wears a 911 remembrance patch on his cap in a game against the Tampa Bay Rays at Citizens Bank Park. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-Imagn Images
If the Phillies shake their roster up this season, they'll likely make their biggest changes in the outfield. There's an outside shot that the club does something at third base, but the infield is pretty much set in stone. (Check out our postmortem on the 2024 Phillies infield here.)
It felt like the Phils never quite solved their outfield puzzle this season. Nick Castellanos started every game in right field. But in center, there was a mix of Johan Rojas (who started 103 games), Brandon Marsh (35), Cristian Pache (18), and Cal Stevenson (6). And eight different players started games in left: Marsh (77), Austin Hays (21), Whit Merrifield (20), Weston Wilson (14), Cristian Pache (12), David Dahl (12), Kyle Schwarber (5), and Kody Clemens (1).
Playing the matchups a bit or platooning a right handed hitter with a lefty is one thing. But whatever the Phillies did in left field and center field is another. The guys listed above posted a combined .710 OPS in LF (15th-highest in the majors) and a combined .644 OPS in CF (20th). Not good enough for a team with championship aspirations.
© Vincent Carchietta | 2024 Oct 8The situation was messy from day one. Rojas provided the best defense in center field. But his glove work wasn't quite as spectacular as it looked in 2023, making his .601 OPS tougher to swallow. Whether playing center or left, Marsh mashed right-handed pitching but was borderline unplayable against lefties.
The Merrifield experiment was a well-documented disaster. He was playing for the Braves by the end of July. Hays was brought in at the trade deadline to either take over an everyday left field role (at best) or platoon with Marsh (at worst). But health issues kept him off the field, and it's unclear whether he would have been a true difference-maker.
A closer look at the Phils' in-house options for 2025:
Career: .274/.323/.470 (.793 OPS), 24 HR per 162
2023: .272/.311/.476 (.787 OPS), 29 HR in 157 games
2024: .254/.311/.431 (.742 OPS), 23 HR in 162 games
Castellanos' season totals do not fully capture the contribution he made to the team in 2024. After a slow start to the season--posting a .521 OPS in March/April and a .706 OPS in May--the rightfielder hit .279/.333/.483 (.817 OPS) from June 1 through the end of the season. He was also one of very few Phils hitters to show up in the NLDS.
With two years and $40 million remaining on his contract, Castellanos is likely locked in at right field again in 2025.
© Vincent Carchietta | 2024 Oct 8Career: .261/.298/.355 (.653 OPS), 5 HR per 162
2023: .302/.342/.430 (.772 OPS), 2 HR in 59 games
2024: .243/.279/.322 (.601 OPS), 3 HR in 120 games
Rojas fits the Phillies' roster well in many ways. On a team full of sluggers, he's speedy and plays tremendous defense. His offense is passable at the bottom of the lineup. And the Phils paid him just $800,000 in 2024, a big help to the finances of an organization that recently handed out several enormous contracts to established stars.
But if the club is looking for more offensive production, center field has to be part of the conversation. The right-handed Rojas' OPS against left-handed pitching was just .526, making a Marsh/Rojas platoon ineffective. The eye test tells us we'll probably never see Rojas get anywhere close to his 2023 numbers over a large sample size. And while there's a familiar refrain that Jo-Ro would be fine if the other hitters would do their jobs, all too often those other hitters did not.
That's not Rojas' fault, but he may suffer the consequences.
Career: .256/.330/.410 (.739 OPS), 14 HR per 162
2023: .277/.372/.458 (.829 OPS), 12 HR in 133 games
2024: .249/.328/.419 (.747 OPS), 16 HR in 135 games
Marsh had an unusually high batting average on balls in play (BABIP) in 2023, making a regression from the slash line he posted that year a near-certainty. And his 2024 numbers weren't bad.
But as Tim wrote, Marsh isn't a great fit as a complimentary hitter to the stars in the Phillies' lineup, mainly because he offers more of the same: a low contact rate and a high strikeout percentage. And a .582 career OPS against left-handed pitching might doom him to a platoon-only role.
Marsh still only has 347 career at-bats against lefties, meaning there's probably room for improvement there. But the Phils are not in a position to wait for players to develop new skills.
© Denny Medley | 2024 Aug 23Career: .261/.313/.432 (.745 OPS), 19 HR per 162
2023: .275/.325/.444 (.769 OPS), 16 HR in 144 games
2024: .255/.303/.396 (.699 OPS), 5 HR in 85 games
An All-Star in 2023, Hays was acquired from the Baltimore Orioles at the trade deadline. He mashes lefties to the tune of an .800 career OPS, making a Hays/Marsh platoon a very real possibility for 2025.
Rob Thomson was interested in giving Hays a shot at an everyday role. But Hays never got an extended run, missing time first to a hamstring strain and later to a kidney infection.
We'll discuss the other outfielders when we get to our postmortem on the Phillies' bench. For now, we'll just note that there are no other in-house options poised to steal a job from Castellanos, Rojas, Marsh, or Hays in 2025.
