Determining who would be replaced if the Phillies add a hitter at the trade deadline isn’t easy

Here’s a fact for Dave Dombrowski to file away in the folder labeled “Things I Need To Consider Between Now and the Trade Deadline.”

It has been nearly 10 years since a team advanced to a World Series with a lineup that had two regulars with an OPS+ below 90 in the regular season. In fact, since 2016, a total of four players have won a World Series after a regular season of 400-plus plate appearances and a sub-90 OPS+:

Of those four players, only Gurriel was still playing full-time in the postseason.

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Long story short, it is hard to win a championship with more than one below-average hitter in a lineup. The Phillies had four until very recently. While Max Kepler and Brandon Marsh have both soared above the cutoff line over the last week, that still leaves J.T. Realmuto (89 OPS+) and Bryson Stott (75 OPS+). Further complicating matters is the shoddy state of the Phillies bench, with Edmundo Sosa (89 OPS+), Johan Rojas (63 OPS+), Rafael Marchán (62 OPS+), and Weston Wilson (65 OPS+) all struggling at the plate. (An OPS+ of 100 represents the league average.)

Seven years after Dombrowski acquired Steve Pearce at the trade deadline en route to a title with the Red Sox, he now faces a more complicated situation with the Phillies. It’s easy to say that he should look to add a bat at the trade deadline. Not so easy is saying whom that bat should replace.

The question of Marsh vs. Johan Rojas in center field should not be a thing anymore. The Phillies are 16-18in Rojas’ starts, 25-13 in Marsh’s starts. Ooh and ahh all you want over Rojas’ highlight reel in the field. There is no amount of defense that can save as many runs as a player costs you when he has a .280 on base percentage and .587 OPS. The latter mark ranks 266th among 289 major league hitters with at least 125 plate appearances. In his last 32 games, Rojas is 8-for-55 with 16 strikeouts, four walks, and one extra base hit.

The real question is Marsh vs. whoever else the Phillies might be able to find at the trade deadline. The answer depends on whether the current version of Marsh sticks around.

Here’s a fact that may surprise you: since May 1, Marsh ranks third among major league center fielders with a .410 on base percentage and second with a .333 batting average. His .881 OPS during that stretch is the type of number the Phillies envisioned when they acquired him in 2022 for blue-chip catcher Logan O’Hoppe. But then, we’ve seen Marsh get hot before. Just last season, he had three stretches of 100-plus plate appearances with an OPS over .840.

Remember 2023? Marsh opened the season with a 1.062 OPS in his first 102 plate appearances. He closed the season with a .908 OPS in 233 plate appearances. In between, he had a .519 OPS in 137 plate appearances.

And let’s not forget the 2023 postseason, when Marsh had a .931 OPS in 42 plate appearances.

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It doesn’t take a lot of offense to give a team a competitive advantage in center field. The major league average at the position is a .694 OPS, lower than all but second base. That’s one of the justifications Dombrowski had when he traded O’Hoppe for Marsh. The conventional wisdom says it was a mistake, but look at the following sets of numbers:

Remember, Marsh is only one year ahead of O’Hoppe in service time. Given the relative offense at each of their positions, the verdict isn’t nearly as cut-and-dried as you might assume. At least, not yet.

This isn’t an argument that the Phillies are pot-committed with Marsh. It’s that they will be hard-pressed to find an upgrade.

Same goes in left field.

The path of least resistance would be finding a right-handed platoon partner for Kepler. You can certainly argue that the Phillies would benefit from upgrading over Kepler outright. But who is the upgrade? Kepler is an excellent defensive left fielder who has been better than his overall numbers suggest at the plate. He has four home runs and a .763 OPS since a mid-May swoon and still looks like a guy who can contribute in a playoff lineup.

Does it really make sense to spend prospect capital on a streaky hitter like the Angels’ Taylor Ward, whose numbers aren’t a whole lot different from Kepler’s?

This is obvious, isn’t it? Even if there was an upgrade available on the trade market, and even if it made sense for the Phillies to part with the necessary prospects, demoting Realmuto would be the ultimate panic move. The Phillies were playing with house money for years with a catcher who also happened to be a legitimate middle-of-the-order run producer. Catcher is the last place you start chasing offense.

Stott is the player who deserves the hardest look. That’s a tough thing to say, given how much fun he is to watch in the field and how much he has meant over the last three postseasons.

But it’s getting late early for Stott. He is two years away from free agency (post-2027) and a year removed from looking like anything more than a slick-fielding nine-hole hitter. His OPS+ in three of four seasons: 85, 86, 75. He has two extra-base hits in his last 25 games while hitting .189 with a .459 OPS.

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There are at least a couple of second basemen who could be available at this year’s deadline in the Rays’ Brandon Lowe and the A’s Luis Urías. But neither is such an offensive force that it would be worth sacrificing Stott’s defense and shaking up the clubhouse to that degree.

Unless Dombrowski gets super creative or goes off the radar, there really isn’t a sensible move that would enable the Phillies prez to add the bat that many fans crave. Absent a major bullpen upgrade, this will be a deadline to tinker at the margins and hope for the best.