PHILADELPHIA — When Brandon Marsh steps into the cage shortly after batting practice ends, his audience is typically just the Phillies’ hitting coaches. There, in an echoing room tucked beneath the stands of Citizens Bank Park, Marsh finds his feel for his swing each day.He starts with some swings to center, then to left, to right. There is no set number. Whenever it feels right, he moves on. Some parts of his routine have changed this season — heading to the cage closer to game time, cutting back on swings, just trying to keep things simple.“Instead of just going ‘swing, swing, swing’ and trying to find something and feel something,” Marsh said, “(I’m) really slowing down and lowering the effort level. Letting me feel my body and see where everything’s at has helped.”These little moments of feeling in the fluorescent-lit room precede the bigger ones that come before a ballpark packed with 40,000 people. Marsh has had plenty this season: his first home run against a left-handed starter since July 2022, collecting 15 hits and nine RBIs in 52 at-bats against lefties, earning his place as an everyday starter after struggling to hit lefties for his entire career.After nearly four years of discussion of what Marsh is not, the focus has shifted to what he is: a strong All-Star candidate who can hit lefties and righties. A left fielder who has the second-best average and a top-20 OPS in MLB since June 1, 2025. A contender for the National League batting title, owning a .332 average in 62 games this season. A key Phillies player whose OPS (.878) isn’t far off from Kyle Schwarber’s (.918) and is just above Bryce Harper’s (.872).It is a version of Marsh that coaches and teammates believed he could be, finally emerging in his fifth season in Philadelphia.When given extended playing time against lefty starters in the past, Marsh often struggled. Entering 2026, he had a career .213/.278/.303 slash line versus lefties (423 at-bats). This season, he is hitting .288/.333/.442 against them. How?“Just experience,” said Marsh, 28. “Just learning more and more every day, and getting a little more comfortable.”“He trusts himself more,” hitting coach Kevin Long says of Brandon Marsh, who is third in the majors with a .332 batting average. (Emilee Chinn / Getty Images)There was no lightbulb moment, no sudden change that took Marsh from a platoon outfielder to one of baseball’s best hitters. So much of this came with time.It goes back to the cage, where Marsh’s sessions are relatively peaceful. He is “ultra-focused on what he needs to do,” hitting coach Kevin Long said. It was not always that way.“He used to beat himself up a lot,” Long said. “He couldn’t even get through his routine without something going haywire. Two bad swings would lead to a complete meltdown. … Pitch selection could throw him off. (Now) he doesn’t get rattled.”It was the same in the field, outfield coach Paco Figueroa said. If Marsh made a mistake on a drill, Figueroa said, “the world ended.” As Figueroa worked with Marsh over the years, the coach’s messaging was consistent: “You have all the talent in the world,” he would tell the two-time Gold Glove Award finalist. “But it’s what’s between the ears.”Marsh said little mistakes, like not being able to hit a flip where he wanted to, would have bothered him in the past.“I feel like I’ve always been a perfectionist with everything I’ve done,” said Marsh, a former top prospect in the Los Angeles Angels system. “It’s helped for sure, but also hurts you at the same time. Just having to teeter with that feeling of being too hard on yourself and trying to be too perfect because this game’s so hard. You’re going to fail. You’re going to fail 70 percent (of the time) and make the Hall of Fame.”Watching his Phillies teammates, Marsh said, helped him accept this. He saw them laughing at themselves and moving on when they made mistakes. Now he tries to do the same. A game situation is so different from being in the cage, Marsh said. Now he understands that a bad swing or two a few hours before he steps to the plate doesn’t mean he’ll perform poorly when it counts.Brandon Marsh talks to Kevin Long in 2023. The Phillies outfielder works with the hitting coach during the offseason. (John Adams / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)Marsh also credited Long, whom he works with during the offseason, with keeping him level-headed. They live 20 minutes from each other in Arizona during the winter, so Marsh will typically spend four days a week with Long — or up to six, Marsh said, if things are going poorly.There were no big changes this offseason, Long said — just refining Marsh’s routine. They focused on being on time, getting Marsh’s body into proper positioning, ensuring he is tight and connected at the plate.Still, this work preceded moments of frustration in spring training, particularly a stretch when Marsh said he hit a lot of grounders to second and flares to left, along with striking out. That, to Marsh, was when it all clicked.“I made it a point like, ‘I’m not going to be that. I can’t be that, or I’m not going to be the player I need to be for my teammates,’” he said.Even if that was a turning point, much of who Marsh is now can be traced to previous seasons. After all, entering Tuesday, he had hit .315/.362/.494 with an .856 OPS since his activation from the injured list on May 3, 2025.Since then, Marsh has spoken frequently about being stubborn, staying within himself and staying “just dumb enough” at the plate. Being stubborn, to him, means sticking to what he’s doing, trying to be himself and trusting his work is enough. Being within himself means not being “Superman” — or Harper — but to play his role at the plate. As for being dumb enough:“Definitely still doing your homework,” Marsh said, “but not living and dying by percentages and shapes, which is hard to do. You get a sheet and it says something, and then they can go out there and flip it and do a completely different thing. So, just trying to be a chameleon up there. Whatever they give me over the heart of the plate, I feel like I’m ready for it. Maybe not every time, but I feel like a lot of the time I’ve been ready for it. I’ve got to just somehow stay that way. That’s the hard part.”In the cage, he works toward staying this way. Long, who underwent Tommy John surgery last year, is back to throwing left-handed batting practice to Marsh. They run flips and other drills in the cage before Marsh begins work with Trajekt, a machine players use to track pitches; the velocity machine; and the spinball machine. He checks all the boxes: up, down, offspeed, etc.The routine is not dissimilar from what he’s done in the past, from what other players run through. Nothing is dramatically different, except for one thing.“He trusts himself more,” Long said. “He knows his swing more, he knows his body movements, he knows what it feels like.”Marsh has been chasing this kind of sustained success, this feeling for so long. Adversity will come at some point, but he now knows that’s just part of life — not cause for panic. This realization, along with his overall evolution — the trust level and maturity that his coaches speak of — is a product of years of work. Work to figure out his daily routine after not having one as a prospect, to excel at the routine once established, to not punish himself for mistakes, to stay even-keeled in the day to day.In some ways, the timing of Marsh’s breakthrough is ideal. The Phillies’ lineup, slow to awaken this season, has relied heavily on Marsh alongside Harper and Schwarber. It is hard to imagine the Phillies being 36-31 and back in contention without Marsh’s efforts. These few months might even earn him a spot on the NL All-Star roster for the Midsummer Classic in Philadelphia.“It would be really cool to be part of that group this year,” Marsh said, “especially in Philly. I’d be lying to you if I said it wasn’t on my mind, but I’m really not focused on that. I’m really focused on just trying to be present here with these guys.”It has been a long road, but here he is. Why look ahead?