Max Kepler and Brandon Marsh are hotter than they’ve been all season for a Phillies team that has, at times, been desperate for offense from both positions.
Kepler hit a go-ahead solo home run off Sandy Alcantara in the fourth inning Monday night in Miami to extend his hitting streak to six games and the Phillies’ win streak to five. They beat the Marlins, 5-2, and picked up more ground on the idle Mets. The Phils (42-29) were 5½ games back of the Mets as recently as Thursday but now trail by just two with three meetings at Citizens Bank Park this weekend.
Marsh has hit in a seven straight. He tripled with one out in the seventh inning and scored an important third run on a Trea Turner RBI single. He also walked and scored one of the Phillies’ two insurance runs in the top of the ninth. This past week is by far the best Marsh has looked in 2025. He’s 10-for-20 with three extra-base hits and has been squaring up the ball hard, lining singles up the middle and into holes. It’s a promising sign and a reminder of what he can contribute against right-handed pitching.
This is also the sort of production the Phillies hoped they’d receive a bit more consistently from Kepler, who has three homers and two doubles in his last six games. He’s hitting .221/.310/.413 through 213 plate appearances.
“That was my first thought, the at-bats by everyone were really good turning the lineup over,” Turner said over the weekend when the Phillies swept the Blue Jays. “It makes a big difference.””
Turner set the tone again, leading the game off with a homer and piling up three more hits. He leads the National League with 88, four more than Manny Machado and five more than Shohei Ohtani.
It made a winner out of Mick Abel, who is 2-0 with a 2.21 ERA through four starts. After three homers and three walks his last time out against the Cubs, Abel bounced back with five innings of one-run ball against one of baseball’s three worst offenses.
Abel’s only difficult inning was the bottom of the second, when he walked Liam Hicks on a borderline full-count pitch with two outs and a man on third base. The next batter, Connor Norby, also ran a deep count and singled in the Marlins’ only run.
Manager Rob Thomson lifted Abel after five innings and 77 pitches, perhaps cognizant of how much the Phillies will need to rely on the rookie this summer without Aaron Nola.
Taijuan Walker, Jordan Romano, Matt Strahm and Orion Kerkering finished off the win. Kerkering is the seventh different Phillie to earn a save this season and it was the first of his big-league career. He went 1-2-3 and has been close to lights-out for a month.
The streaking Phillies look to make it six in a row on Tuesday behind Jesus Luzardo, who is coming off a 10-strikeout gem after making adjustments to his glove positioning to limit pitch-tipping.
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