Brandon Marsh’s at-ball-in-play excellence has quietly vaulted him ahead of every National League hitter with at least 2,000 plate appearances—placing him just behind Ty Cobb in a stat that often gets framed as “luck,” even as Marsh’s profile defies the usual
For years, Brandon Marsh has been doing the kind of work that doesn’t always make the highlight reel—but it does show up in the numbers when you start looking closely.
A second-round Draft pick out of high school by the Angels in 2016. Marsh has spent most of the last five seasons roaming the outfield for a Phillies team that has been one of the most successful in the game over that span. He’s played in a World Series, and he posted a .913 OPS in Philadelphia’s 2022 loss to Houston.
What stands out, though, isn’t only the production. It’s what he’s never quite received the spotlight for. Marsh has never received a Most Valuable Player vote or appeared in the All-Star Game. He’s been more often a platoon player than a full-time, everyday starter.
That gap between impact and recognition is part of why it’s so striking to see where he lands on an all-time leaderboard.
Batting Average on Balls In Play—BABIP—starts with a simple idea. Regular batting average measures how many hits you get out of times to the plate. excluding walks. hit by pitch. and sacrifice flies. BABIP keeps that “in play” focus, but goes further by removing strikeouts and home runs. The question becomes: when a hitter makes contact and the ball doesn’t leave the park, what’s the result?. In theory, the defense should be able to make plays on most of these chances. So what’s the batting average then?.
BABIP has traditionally been used as a proxy for luck, though the reality is more nuanced than that. Faster runners can beat out more infield hits. If a batter hits the ball so hard that fielders are forced into awkward positioning. it can show up there too. Still, some of it can be luck, and teams can use it to project forward.
That “luck” framing hits a nerve with how Marsh’s numbers have held up.
Major League average BABIP has been around .295 for years. and this year it’s the lowest since 1992—largely tied. in the story’s telling. to excellent defensive skill and positioning. Marsh hasn’t been below .348 once. His high came at .403 in 2021. In that year, 40 percent of his non-homer contact found grass or dirt—“but not gloves.”.
The current season adds another layer: Marsh is at .394 entering Friday night’s series opener at Dodger Stadium.
And when the article widens to the last five seasons, the pattern becomes hard to ignore. Marsh is part of a yearly group of players who managed a BABIP of .348 or better in seasons with 250-plus plate appearances. The list of the “full list of players” isn’t reproduced here in detail. but Marsh’s placement within it is spelled out:.
He was first in his rookie season of 2021 with that .403. Then he was fifth in 2022, second in 2023, seventh in 2024, and fourth in 2025. The claim is that this isn’t a one-year fluke; it’s a trend. And in 2026, he’s fifth.
So what’s the “special skill” that seems to separate him? Speed isn’t the main answer. As a rookie, his speed was elite—94th percentile—and over the last three years he’s still above average at 74th percentile. But the story’s point is that “above-average speed” isn’t unique.
Hard-hit ability isn’t the key either. There are plenty of players who have above-average speed and above-average hard-hitting.
The focus narrows instead to what his contact does to the field.
Marsh is also described as not being a Luis Arraez-level bat control savant. In fact, his strikeout rate tells a different story. Marsh’s career strikeout rate is 30.6%, about five times as high as Arraez’s 5.9%. For the first four years of Marsh’s career. he was one of baseball’s biggest whiffers. north of 30% each year. Last year that dropped to 25.9%. and this year it dropped again to 21.6%—the first time he’s striking out less than Major League average.
But the BABIP story doesn’t change alongside the strikeout cuts. Even though BABIP excludes strikeouts (and a strikeout instead of, say, an Arraez-type groundout could matter in theory), “it hasn’t changed the BABIP numbers at all,” the article says.
What’s being suggested is that Marsh is difficult to defend—not because he’s exploding the ball out of the yard, but because of the kind of contact he makes.
Over the last five seasons, more than 200 batters have put at least 800 non-homer batted balls into play. Using Statcast’s estimated success rate—graded by difficulty. mostly by time and distance needed—the story says only four batters have created opportunities more difficult for fielders than Marsh has.
There’s a caveat. De La Cruz is described as a speedy switch-hitter. framed as “a different positioning animal entirely.” Francisco Rodríguez and Ronald Acuña Jr. are described as traditional power-speed stars. Trea Turner. Marsh’s teammate. is described as blessed with elite speed “now and seemingly forever.” On the other end. the story mentions dead-pull lefties at 84%. including Max Muncy and Kyle Schwarber—“good hitters” who are not hard to defend.
Then there’s Marsh, tied with a few others for giving fielders the fifth-hardest chances to make, where the article’s argument is that fielders “largely do not” get those outs.
The deeper reason offered is positional uncertainty. Marsh is described as giving fielders “very few noticeable tendencies” in his hitting profile. The story describes his spray as average or close to average in most ways you can measure—grounders, pull-side, “this way, that way, etc.”
One specific detail matters: his popup rate is less than half the average. Popups are treated like near-strikeouts in terms of how likely they are to become hits. and the article gives a small. sharp statistic: popups have an .014 average the last two seasons. “Don’t hit popups. ” the logic goes. because the ball tends to come back toward the defense in a way that turns contact into outs.
Still, the most surprising part of the comparison isn’t speed or power. It’s where the article lands him with two very different hitters.
Marsh is compared to Freddie Freeman and—yes—Arraez.
Freeman is described as a nine-time All-Star, almost certainly headed to the Hall of Fame, and known best for whatever version of “being a pure hitter” you’d like to apply. Arraez isn’t described as Cooperstown-bound, but is framed as one of the greatest bat-to-ball hitters ever.
What they’re said to share is explained simply: they hit the ball at the right angles. Not too high, so the ball carries to waiting outfielders. Not too low, so it ends up as easy middle-infield material. The “right kind of ‘get it over the infield’ hits” are described as nearly impossible to defend because of how outfield depth and middle-infield starts create a large zone in between.
The article leans on “launch angle” despite acknowledging it’s overused. It defines 0° as right back at the pitcher and flags that anything over 40° gets into popup land. The sweet spot is placed between 8° and 32°—not too high, not too low.
Over the last five seasons, among 200 players with at least 1,000 batted balls, the story says no one has a higher rate of getting it into that launch-angle sweet spot than Freeman. It says fourth is Arraez, tracking with his lack of power. And it places Marsh in the middle—second on the list.
The closing question is straightforward and personal for a player built around contact: who else has the highest rate of batted balls in the launch-angle sweet spot?. The story answers with the same three names—Freeman, Arraez, and Marsh—then ties it back to swing path. It says all three have steeper-than-average swing paths that help produce that profile.
Then comes the final tension: it’s suggested that “the only thing keeping Marsh from being Freeman or Arraez is that he strikes out too much,” while also conceding the point doesn’t have to be taken all the way.
The story’s strongest emotional claim is that Marsh. unlike most hitters. seems to have found a way to “hacked the luck stat.” Most hitters’ BABIP is treated like something that can shift from year to year. For Marsh, the article says it’s more persistent—and not an accident. Even when baseball gives him what he wants. “it still doesn’t” for others. because a 30% strikeout rate remains a brutal ceiling for even the best timing.
And for a player who hasn’t received an MVP vote or made an All-Star roster, that’s the quiet twist: the ledger that matters most here doesn’t care about the spotlight. It cares what happens when the ball stays in play.
In that world, Marsh is finding a place beside legends—right behind Ty Cobb overall in a BABIP ranking that begins in 1913, where the story says he’s ahead of every other National League hitter with 2,000 plate appearances.
Brandon Marsh Phillies BABIP Ty Cobb Freddie Freeman Luis Arraez launch angle Statcast Major League Baseball