{"id":99989,"date":"2025-05-05T12:02:06","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T16:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=99989"},"modified":"2025-05-05T12:02:06","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T16:02:06","slug":"phillies-outfielder-on-a-roll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/05\/05\/phillies-outfielder-on-a-roll\/","title":{"rendered":"Phillies Outfielder On A Roll"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Max Kepler has been on a roll<\/a> lately. Kepler has turned things around after a slow start<\/a> at the plate. In 31 games this season, Kepler has a .262\/.339\/.467 line with five home runs and 11 RBI. This season, Kepler has a 122 wRC+ with a .350 wOBA and a .284 BABIP. Furthermore, Kepler has an 18.2% strikeout rate and a 9.9% walk rate in 2025. Kepler has a career-best 51.2% HardHit rate and an 11.6% barrel rate. So far this season, Kepler has a 12.8% soft contact rate compared to a 36.0% hard contact rate. Kepler has a 49.7% swing rate and a 79.2% contact rate, which are better than his 2024 numbers. Swinging at fewer pitches while making contact with more and hitting the ball harder have contributed to this early success.<\/p>\n

Kepler had an excellent spring training leading into the season. In 17 spring training games, Kepler had a 1.175 OPS along with a 203 wRC+. During spring training, Kepler had an 18.0% strikeout rate and a 20.0% walk rate. In addition, Kepler recorded a .503 wOBA along with a .429 BABIP. Kepler had an outstanding 37.5% HR\/FB rate in spring training. Across the board between spring training and the regular season, Kepler is performing better than he did in the 2024 regular season. Kepler had a .682 OPS and a 94 wRC+ in 105 games with the Minnesota Twins last season. The Twins opted not to re-sign Kepler this past offseason, leading to him signing with the Phillies. Kepler has not played more than 131 games in a season since 2019, when he played in 134 games.<\/p>\n

Phillies Outfielder On A Roll In Recent Games<\/h2>\n

Hot Streak<\/h3>\n

At the time Kepler signed with the Phillies, it was a curious move<\/a> because of the team\u2019s lineup construction. Kepler has been a good addition to the team so far. In his last 13 games, Kepler has a .310\/.375\/.643 line with four home runs and seven RBI. Kepler has a 175 wRC+ with a .430 wOBA and a .281 BABIP in that span. During\u00a0this span, Kepler had a 14.6% strikeout rate and an 8.3% walk rate. Kepler has a 19.0% HR\/FB rate during this span that dates back to April 20. During this streak, Kepler had an 11.1% soft contact rate compared to a 36.1% hard contact rate. Kepler has 13 hits during this stretch, six of which have been extra-base hits. So far this month, Kepler has a 1.224 OPS and a 213 wRC+ with two home runs across four games.<\/p>\n

Outlook Moving Forward<\/h3>\n

Weston Wilson returning from the injured list might lead to a change. This season, Kepler has a .606 OPS and a 61 wRC+ against left-handed pitchers. For comparison, Kepler has a .862 OPS and a 139 wRC+ against right-handed pitchers this season. During this run, Kepler has a 1.012 OPS and a 179 wRC+ against right-handed pitchers. During this stretch, Kepler has a 1.018 OPS and a 175 wRC+ against left-handed pitchers. However, this season Kepler has 24 at-bats versus left-handed pitchers compared to 83 at-bats against right-handed pitchers. Wilson has a 1.033 OPS and a 181 wRC+ against left-handed pitchers in his career. In addition, Wilson started over Kepler against a left-handed starter on May 4. Kepler should not be platooned for the time being.<\/p>\n

Main Photo Credits: Kyle Ross-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Max Kepler has been on a roll lately. Kepler has turned things around after a slow start at the plate. In 31 games this season, Kepler has a .262\/.339\/.467 line with five home runs and 11 RBI. This season, Kepler has a 122 wRC+ with a .350 wOBA and a .284 BABIP. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4566,"featured_media":99992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[511,28710],"class_list":["post-99989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-phillies","tag-max-kepler","tag-weston-wilson"],"modified_by":"Evan Mazza, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4566"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99989"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99994,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99989\/revisions\/99994"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}