Platoon player Otto Kemp talks defense after awkward day in outfield
PHILADELPHIA — Otto Kemp trotted out to left field for just the 21st time in his professional career on Sunday afternoon. Entrenched in a platoon with Brandon Marsh, that’s where he’ll get the bulk of his playing time to face left-handed starting pitchers.
So with southpaw Mackenzie Gore on the mound for the Texas Rangers, Phillies manager Rob Thomson penciled Kemp into the lineup at the No. 7 position. But his inexperience showed in his first start of the season during a handful of unsteady plays.
“He’s getting better and better,” Thomson said of Kemp’s defense after the Phillies’ 8-3 loss. “Today was the first game in a while that he’s been out in left field. So there were a couple balls that he thought he could catch and hit up against the wall, but he’s been fine.”
Kemp’s first awkward defensive moment came in the top of the fourth. As Rangers outfielder Sam Haggerty lined a changeup into left field at 91.2 mph, Kemp broke in, then had to venture a few steps backward in order to catch the ball. He reached high above his head to complete the play with a slight jump, but the putout hardly appeared routine.
Two doubles off the wall seemed to give Kemp trouble later in the game. The 26-year-old tried to track down a ball off the bat of Andrew McCutchen in the sixth inning and didn’t back off until he was too close to the fence. It smacked off the faucet logo of the F.W. Webb sign in left-center and rolled away, forcing Kemp to run in and grab it.
Kemp faced a similar issue on an Ezequiel Duran double an inning later. This ball went farther down the line, hitting the Wawa sign. Kemp had no play in the air, but he went for it with a route too close to the wall. He had to sprint in to chase the ball down and may have been able to prevent a runner from scoring from first base if he rebounded it cleanly.
“I’m fine with the first ball, the one that McCutchen hit,” Kemp said. “It’s a hard liner that I was going after. I think situationally, with nobody on, it’s OK to be aggressive there. And then with that ball that Duran hit, situationally, it was just a little bit too overly aggressive.”
He went with full effort for Duran ball, but he realized he should have played it differently in hindsight. Kemp believed he could have kept the run off the board if he pulled up and angled himself for the ricochet.
“The last couple steps where I knew I wasn’t going to get to it, just tail off there and try and block that ball from getting past me,” Kemp said of how he should have played it. “So if I had to do it over again, I would have played that one off the wall.”
Navigating the wall is still Kemp’s biggest challenge. He said he wants to use chances like he had on Sunday to learn when and how to approach those balls. He knows he’ll have more opportunities, so he wants to make himself better and more comfortable ahead of them.
Kemp, who went 0-for-2 on Sunday, is a second-year role player with an intriguing bat who doesn’t really have a defensive home. He’s an infielder by trade, but he struggled at third base last year, he doesn’t have great range for a second baseman and the Phillies have Bryce Harper locked in at first. The club has carved out some playing time for Kemp in left field, a position he picked up more seriously during last season.
The attention on Kemp’s outfield defense has been magnified because the Phillies did not sign a right-handed-hitting platoon partner to pair in left with Marsh, who hit .197 against lefties in 2025. Defensive specialist Johan Rojas is not an option right now after his 80-game suspension. Utility man Dylan Moore is on the bench and can play left field, but he’s not much of a hitter. Bryan De La Cruz is at Triple-A, but his splits against left-handers are not particularly impressive.
That leaves Kemp as the guy for the short side of the platoon, even if he’s no seasoned veteran in left field. But the Phillies, who consider Kemp a winning ballplayer, seem to think that he can figure it out on the fly and at least get to a passable level.
It might not be an easy task for the former undrafted free agent. But he intends to keep working hard on his defense, and he maintained that being part of the platoon doesn’t add any extra pressure in the field.
“I see it as an opportunity to go play the game and get at-bats and try and help this team win,” Kemp said. “I’m not trying to see it as anything more than that.”