No but clearly the Phillies think it is. Or at least, that Sosa's defensive upside is better. They are both poor LFs, Sosa just happens to have a bigger defensive skill set and should be better in theory or eventually. And Kemp to RF seems even less likely.
Matt laid this out already today (read the next post too, seems like he's not saying Kemp can or can't, he's just saying the Phillies don't think he can. Which is a problem considering they put all their chips on him doing just that in the off-season!)
Based on what he did in AAA and the majors in both top line and underlying metrics, Otto Kemp should be able to hit left handed pitchers and provide positional flexibility on a bench. He hits the ball hard and historically has had a good approach. It turns out he can’t actually play LF.
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— Matt Winkelman (
@mattwinkelman.bsky.social
) May 24, 2026 at 4:51 PM
The bench is bad, but one of the reasons it's bad is the misfit parts. We have a RH DH/1B who won't ever play those positions, and isn't a better 3B or 2B than the other RH bench bat. And of course Sosa also hits from the sames side as the starting SS. I can only assume they are very much counting on Rojas returning to at least give them a movable part.
There weren't any other options once Bichette jilted the Phillies, unfortunately. The mistake, especially if they were willing to spend on Bichette, was locking in Garcia early. But it's not like they were gonna sign Tucker or Bellinger (both LHBs too). What really hurts is it turns out they could have signed Bichette and just gone with Stubbs and Marchan and not actually missed JT that much probably.
Except of course Bichette is also terrible, had we signed him, Bohm would probably have a 130 OPS+ on his new team and DD would look as bad as Stearns Doesn'.
