Phillies should wait to make a decision on Max Kepler and Justin Crawford as trade deadline approaches

Dave Dombrowski needs to look back to 2023 to see how badly he could mess things up by giving up on Max Kepler.

I’m sure he’s well aware of that. I’m sure he sees Austin Hays’ .861 OPS and seven home runs in Cincinnati and feels a combination of vindication, regret, and dread. I’m sure he is haunted by the thought of pulling the plug on Kepler and then watching him do in the second half what Hays has done in the first half this season.

In 2023, the switch flipped for Kepler in late June. Before that, he was where he is now. He had a .672 OPS. He was losing playing time in the Twins’ outfield. Then, boom. He hit a home run at Camden Yards and never looked back.

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From June 30 through the end of the season, Kepler was one of the hottest hitters in the American League. He hit 14 home runs in his last 75 games, batting .301 with a .371 on-base percentage and a .538 slugging percentage, for a .909 OPS in his last 299 plate appearances of the season.

Look at those numbers again. Picture them coming from Justin Crawford. Picture them coming from someone the Phillies acquire by trading Crawford. Heck, picture them coming from Bryce Harper. It’s the kind of batting line the Phillies could be chasing at this year’s trade deadline. First, they have to figure out what they already have.

In triple A, they have a Top 100 center field prospect who is hitting .340 on the season and .370 since May 1.

In center field, they have a 27-year-old who is hitting .310 with a .369 on-base percentage and .813 OPS in his last 47 games.

In right field, they have a veteran who is hitting .261 with an .822 OPS and six home runs in his last 31 games.

And then there is left field. There, they have Kepler, whom they liked enough to sign to a one-year, $10 million deal in the offseason in the face of plenty of consternation. The top-line numbers suggest that the move has been a mistake, especially given Hays’ performance in Cincinnati, where he signed a one-year, $5 million contract after the Phillies non-tendered him.

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Never mind that most fans and media considered Hays himself a mistake after Dombrowski acquired him at last year’s trade deadline for Seranthony Domínguez and Cristian Pache.

Hays’ 2025 resurgence with the Reds is a reminder of why it is tough to make baseball decisions based on past results. Same goes for Domínguez, who has a 3.15 ERA and career-high strikeout rate with the Orioles this season.

Dombrowski has been playing whack-a-mole for the last two seasons. Matt Vierling goes to Detroit and almost immediately becomes the exact sort of right-handed center fielder the Phillies have been searching for (.723 OPS, 16 homers per 162 games). Gregory Soto comes to Philly and gets sold for pennies on the dollar to the Orioles, where he is 17-for-18 in hold opportunities and has stranded 14-of-18 inherited runners this season. Even Kody Clemens has an .802 OPS and nine home runs in 143 plate appearances with the Twins.

Now, we’ll see what all of those numbers look like at the end of the season. But I’m not breaking any news by pointing out that buying high and selling low is a loser’s gambit. The Phillies need to make sure they aren’t selling low on Kepler before they either call up Crawford or trade for an outfielder. They need to let July play out before they make any decisions.

Kepler’s underlying metrics suggest that he may take advantage of the last opportunity. Forget positive regression. Just look at the two home runs he was robbed of by Michael Harris and Jackson Merrill. With those two homers alone, his OPS would be 40 points higher than it is right now.

Would we be looking at Kepler any differently if he had a .725 OPS and 12 home runs instead of .685 and 10 homers? Maybe not. He has had more than a season’s worth of games over the last year-and-a-half, and his overall batting line looks like this: .683 OPS, .302 OBP, 18 home runs, 692 plate appearances.

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But Kepler has hardly looked like Whit Merrifield 2.0. Case in point: his towering home run off Dylan Cease in Wednesday’s nightcap win over the Padres. The guy can hit fastballs, even good ones, and that is the kind of thing that can play down the stretch and in the postseason.

I’m not relying solely on the eye test when I say that Kepler has been better than people give him credit for. His 10.9% walk percentage is third on the team behind Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper. Same goes for his average exit velocity. Statcast pegs his expected slugging percentage at .421 vs. his actual slug of .369. FanGraphs has his weighted expected WOBA at .328, well north of his actual .299.

These “expected” stats attempt to project what a player’s numbers would be in a luck-neutral environment given his quality of contact (e.g., those two robbed home runs). However much weight you put into them, they at least suggest that some positive regression could be in store for Kepler.

The numbers also suggest that he hasn’t been a materially worse hitter than some of the guys you might identify as candidates to replace him via trade. For example, that .328 weighted expected wOBA is better than Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Willi Castro, Cedric Mullins, Jarren Duran, and Luis Robert Jr. to name a few.

Let’s say the Phillies decide they need an upgrade in the outfield, whether by replacing Kepler in left or replacing Brandon Marsh in center (who would presumably then replace Kepler in left). They’ll likely have to pick between two types of players: somebody who is prohibitively expensive, or somebody who is basically a Kepler type with better first-half numbers.

We have all month of July to kick around names and hypothetical deals. The Orioles’ Ramon Laureano would be at the top of my list. But why would they trade a guy who has a $6 million club option for next season? It’s a question you’ll find yourself asking of most teams who have a player who might make sense for the Phillies.

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The best-case scenario is that Kepler gets hot this month and persuades Dombrowski to focus solely on the bullpen. He has always been a streaky hitter. Last year, he hit .311 with four home runs and a .912 OPS in his first 31 games. We already touched on 2023, when he put up similar numbers over his last 70-plus games.

Dombrowski needs to let July play out before making any decisions on Crawford or the trade market. We still have a few more weeks before things get really interesting.