The Phillies, Brandon Marsh, and the Pitfalls of Small Samples

Brandon Marsh took a lot of heat from the Philadelphia Phillies faithful at the beginning of the 2025 season. The 27-year-old outfielder got off to a rough start, going 4-for-42 over the first three weeks of the year. By the time a hamstring strain forced him to the IL in mid-April, he was batting .095 with a .387 OPS.

Marsh immediately looked better upon his return. He went 2-for-4 with an RBI double in his first game back. Then, he hit .298 with a 133 wRC+ over the next four weeks.

Yet, due to his dreadful performance in April, his overall numbers still looked poor by the end of May. On the year, he was batting .212 with an 81 wRC+. It wasn’t until halfway through June that he raised his overall wRC+ above 100.

By that point, it certainly felt like a lot of Phillies fans had already made up their minds about his season.

I’ll admit that’s a difficult claim to prove. But please, allow me to be unscientific in my analysis – allow me to speak as the opinionated fan that I am – just this once. From scrolling through social media, reading blog posts, engaging in conversations, and listening to pundits on TV, I got a strong sense that Phillies fans around me were giving up on Marsh.

They were giving up too soon.

Part of the problem, in addition to his slow start, was a lack of timely production, a.k.a. clutch hits. According to FanGraphs’ Win Probability Added (WPA), Marsh cost the Phillies an entire win with his bat in March and April, despite only taking 51 trips to the plate. Not only was he hitting poorly in general, but he was hitting especially poorly in higher-leverage moments.

Since May, Marsh has been a much better hitter. But he still hasn’t been as successful in the biggest and brightest moments. His “clutch” score, according to FanGraphs, is still one of the worst on the team. Thus, his full-season WPA remains in the negatives.

However, stats like clutch and WPA are designed to be descriptive, not predictive. They do a great job illustrating what we’ve seen on the field, and therefore, they do a great job of explaining why Phillies fans might be disappointed in Brandon Marsh.

The thing is, a player’s performance in higher-leverage spots in the past tells us next to nothing about how he’ll perform in higher-leverage spots going forward.

Similarly, a player’s performance over a brief stretch tells us very little about what to expect over a full season. When it comes to an established player with a track record of success, an early-season slump is usually just that: a slump.

Entering games on Friday, August 8, Marsh has a 107 wRC+ in 2025. That’s identical to his 107 wRC+ from 2024. His power numbers are down, but his strikeout rate has never been better.

All in all, his 107 wRC+ is still a little disappointing compared to his 122 wRC+ from his first two seasons with the Phillies. On the other hand, his xwOBA has never been better.

Marsh produced a .341 wOBA with Philadelphia from 2022-24, despite a .321 xwOBA. This year, those numbers are reversed. His wOBA is only .324, but his xwOBA is a career-best .341.

All this to say, there was never any legitimate reason to worry about Marsh. I’d argue he’s pretty much exactly the same player he has been throughout his tenure with the Phillies.

Across 400 games in red pinstripes, Marsh has hit .266 with a 114 wRC+ and 7.8 fWAR. Those aren’t superstar numbers, but they’re well above average, and they represent the kind of production I expect from him moving forward.

It is easy for a cold streak, especially one at the beginning of the season, to impact a fan base’s perspective of a player. The worse the cold streak is, the more true that becomes.

The same is true of an unlucky stretch, when a player is producing at the plate but not at the right moments. A come-from-behind, ninth-inning RBI single is much easier to remember than an early base hit with the bags empty and your team already down by several runs. A high-leverage hit and a low-leverage hit require the same amount of talent, but the former earns a player a lot more credit.

As Marsh struggled in April and failed to deliver in the most important spots, Phillies fans needed to remember the hitter he was over a much larger sample in previous years. It’s easy to be heavily swayed by the latest data, but more information is almost always better than more recent information.

Scratch April from the record, and Marsh is batting .302 with an .815 OPS, a 127 wRC+, and 1.7 fWAR in 2025. That’s a great player, especially when he’s only a complementary piece on a team with several bigger stars.

I understand that Phillies fans are frustrated that the team has not been able to find a reliable everyday center fielder since the days of Shane Victorino. I’m a Phillies fan myself, and I’m frustrated too.

Marsh was one of many players we thought might finally be the answer. That hasn’t been the case. His glove is better suited for a corner spot. He can’t hit left-handed pitching. He’s gone on the IL with various leg injuries in all four seasons of his Phillies career.

Still, Marsh has been just as productive, and I’d argue more consistent, than Bryson Stott and Alec Bohm, fellow graduates of the “Phillies daycare” who I feel get far more benefit of the doubt from the fan base.

So, I call on my compatriots in the Phillies fandom to look past Brandon Marsh’s early-season stats, to look past his “unclutch” performance, and to look past just the surface-level stats. Marsh has been a key cog for this club since they first broke their postseason drought in 2022. He’s just as important now as he was then.