Phillies

Max Kepler is Upset He’s Not an Everyday Player

By Kyle Pagan

Published: Jun 27th, 2025 · 10:07 AM EDT

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The Phillies just got embarrassed in Houston, scoring a measly one run the entire series. You’d hope guys would regroup and get focused for Atlanta. Instead we have Max Kepler upset that he’s not an everyday left fielder like he was promised in the offseason, according to Matt Gelb at The Athletic (with ads):

Kepler, a lefty hitter, was brought in to be a stable presence in an outfield corner of the outfield. They could not find the proper righty and settled on Kepler. He’s hitting .209/.300/.383 in 267 plate appearances. He is not the problem, just a problem.

“The biggest challenge for me is not playing routinely,” Kepler said after Thursday’s loss. “That’s the biggest challenge.”

Kepler was under the impression he would.

“Yeah,” he said, “I was told I was going to be the starting left fielder.”

He has started 60 of the first 81 games but only three times against a lefty starter. He sat the last four days. He bounced one to second base in his first at-bat. He ran, then slowed down as he neared the bag. The Astros turned a 4-6-3 double play that Kepler might have beaten with a better effort. He struck out looking in the fifth, then hit a weak groundout to first in the seventh.

Damn. Pretty brutal when a beat writer calls you out as “a problem”. And what’s up with Kepler? He’s not exactly hitting the cover off of the ball. How about we hit against righties before we start complaining about not playing against lefties?

We’ve now had two-thirds of the outfield unhappy with Rob Thomson’s decisions in a little over a week. Not exactly the place you want to be when you’re a half-game back of first place. What the hell is going on in that locker room? Are these guys miserable or is this just the dog days of summer? I feel like the fanbase is pretty out on this team on the daily. These attitudes make absolutely zero sense when you have the sixth-best record in baseball. Especially when you factor in that Bryce Harper, Aaron Nola, and Jose Alvarado all have missed significant time and they’re still 13 games over .500. This team is good. They should be a World Series team, but they’re faced with the same problems again. The lineup goes cold and the bullpen can’t stop giving up runs in important leverage spots. You’d hope they build on a series win against the Mets and get going. Instead they come out flatter than flat. I personally don’t think you can judge this team until after the deadline, but it’s not looking good, and I don’t have much faith in Dave Dombrowski to hit on a trade that will catapult them to the pennant. So here we are in the middle of June. The funny thing about baseball is they could go out and sweep the Braves and we’d all be back in on them. If you want a silver lining for the last series it’s that the starting pitching is dominant.