Bryson Stott: The Finished Product

Rhona Wise-Imagn Images This year, the Philadelphia Phillies are 26th in team position player WAR and 27th in wRC+. It’s not because they haven’t thrown enough money at the problem. They’re paying eight position players at least $10 million this year, if you include the cost of Nick Castellanos’ buyout. Nine players have batted at least 250 times for the Phillies this year; Brandon Marsh is the only one who didn’t cost them either eight figures or a first-round draft pick. And yet: Even as Kyle Schwarber chases yet another home run title and Bryce Harper posts his best OBP in three years, Bryson Stott is within a tenth of a win of the team lead in WAR. Stott, one of the quietest and least conspicuous members of the Phillies’ core, has taken his turn to carry the baton. Over a two-month span, from June 15 to August 15, Stott hit .306/.404/.462 and was third in WAR in the entire league. I’d been waiting for a campaign like this from Stott since his rookie year. He’s been a good player this whole time; over his first four big league seasons, he’d floated between average and first-division starter, clocking in at a career wRC+ of 92 and an average of 2.5 WAR per season. He’s a terrific defender and baserunner and a decent enough hitter. But the sum of his parts has always been even better than that. Over the past four seasons, there are 11 qualified hitters with a walk rate over 7.5%, a strikeout rate under 20%, a chase rate under 30%, an in-zone contact rate of 90% or higher, and a GB/FB ratio under 1.2. Here they are: A Bunch of Guys With Great Plate Discipline and Contact Skills Stott obviously isn’t as big and strong as Rutschman or Alvarez. He’s not even as big and strong as he was supposed to be as a prospect: In his draft year, UNLV listed Stott at 6-foot-3, but after ABS came around and blew up everyone’s white lies about their height, Stott now clocks in at an even 6-foot. 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The past couple weeks haven’t been as productive for the Phillies infielder, but even so, he doubled his walk rate from the first half to the second half. I wanted to know if Stott had finally found the secret to making it all click. “Nothing really,” Stott said. “Earlier on, I was hitting the ball hard, just kind of at people. It wasn’t really a change, but I just started getting walked more. I’d take — I don’t want to say easier walks — but easier takes that led to walks instead of a ball that’s 0.2 inches out of the strike zone.” The numbers largely bear that out. Stott ran a .208 BABIP in May, then ripped off BABIPs of .356, .369, and .316 in the ensuing three months. September has brought the return of bad batted ball luck; Stott has only two base hits on 22 balls in play this month. A couple hours after our interview, Stott crushed a ball down the first base line — 103.1 mph exit velocity, .450 xBA — only to watch Christian Walker snare it and turn it into a 3-6-3 double play. The BABIP gods giveth, and the BABIP gods taketh away. Stott has also correctly identified that his takes are getting easier, or at least that he’s making better decisions on borderline pitches as the season goes on. Stott has always run hot and cold; this is by no means the first article to wonder if he’s finally gotten everything to click. Here’s another by Alex Coffey of the Philadelphia Inqurier from all the way back in May 2023. And Stott is well aware of his own streakiness. “I feel like I’d run into months where no matter how hard I hit it, somebody was standing there, and some months it would be I would break my bat and hit a cue ball down the third base line, and I’d have 15 walks on the month or something,” he said. “So up until this last road trip, I felt like hitting the ball hard and taking my walks led to good things.” That cycle of excitement and resignation is a backhanded compliment of sorts; people don’t bother getting their hopes up about hitters who flat-out suck. Having seen Paredes, Perdomo, and others convert a Stott-like skill set into serious offensive pop only supports the idea that Stott is one tweak away from turning into Betts or Bregman. I mean, the power is definitely in there. But Stott is already trying to tap into that kind of in-air, pull-side power. His in-air pull rate this year is a career-high 16.2%. That coincides with bat tracking data that shows him setting up with a more open stance and meeting the ball in front of the plate more than in previous seasons. “I always try to pull the ball,” Stott said. “I feel like my strength is to right-center and right field, and if I know that’s my strength, there’s no reason not to try to get closer to the plate or catch the ball more out front. Knowing that my success comes from driving the ball to right field, [I’m] trying to do whatever I can to turn the middle pitch into an inside pitch, the outside pitch into a middle pitch, and so forth.” But after five years and 700 major league games, Stott might be a finished product. That feels weird to say, because it still feels — even to Stott himself — like he’s the kid in a veteran-heavy clubhouse. “I’m still the young one, service-time wise,” he said, which caused me to interrupt. “You’re not that young,” I said. “You’re a free agent in a year!” “Yeah, but just look around,” Stott said. “It’s 10 years of service everywhere. Bryce is going on year 14 or whatever. J.T. has 10, Trea has 10, and Wheels and Noles, I mean, you just go down the line… I’m still kind of down on the totem pole in this clubhouse.” But the Phillies’ uncommon roster stability has distorted time to an extent. The 2022 Phillies’ surprise run to the World Series rested mostly on the shoulders of big-name veterans like Harper, Schwarber, Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, J.T. Realmuto, and Castellanos. But the supporting cast was heavy on peppy mid-20somethings like Stott, Marsh, Alec Bohm, and Matt Vierling. Even Ranger Suarez was only 26 on Opening Day that year. In the five years since, the Phillies’ homegrown talent pipeline has dried up. Between Stott and Justin Crawford, who debuted on Opening Day this season, the farm system produced Orion Kerkering and not a whole lot else. Stott is the third-youngest Phillies regular, ahead of only Crawford and Marsh, whose birthday comes two and a half months after Stott’s. In a different context, he might’ve found a different role in the clubhouse. The Brewers, for instance, are carrying 14 position players at the moment. Of those, only Christian Yelich, Gary Sánchez, Jake Bauers, and David Hamilton (by a week) are older than Stott. Only Yelich, Bauers, Sánchez, William Contreras, and Andrew Vaughn have more service time. But in the real world, the past five years have been a blur. “I feel like they’ve gone by almost too fast,” Stott said. “It’s like you blink, and the year’s over. And now with the kids at home, the offseasons go by even faster.” Stott wasn’t married when he made his major league debut four and a half years ago; the wedding and all three kids have come since then. “I can remember at-bats from my rookie year that felt like yesterday,” he said. “I think as you get older, everything seems to move faster, so I have to try and enjoy it as much as I possibly can.” Stott has spent his entire career in a state of temporal uncertainty. As the Phillies’ roster stays the same, the calendar moves with lightning speed. It’s left him as a perpetual rookie on the most static roster in modern baseball history. But the perpetual rookie and father of three turns 29 next month. In baseball terms, he’s all grown. So as tantalizing as his offensive potential has been, it makes more sense to consider him as he is now. Even if Stott remains a streaky, but league-average, hitter, his bat is not what makes him so valuable to the Phillies. Heading into Thursday’s games, Stott had a 97 wRC+ and 3.2 WAR. Only one qualified hitter has a lower wRC+ than Stott and more WAR: Dansby Swanson, who’s one spot behind Stott on the wRC+ leaderboard. Swanson has 3.4 WAR; Spencer Torkelson, who has a wRC+ of 102, has 0.2 WAR. I don’t mean to pick on Tork specifically; he was just in a convenient spot on the leaderboard. Swanson, however, makes for a useful comparison. The most overrated attribute in sports is “doing the little things right.” They matter, sure, but they aren’t as valuable as a .370 OBP or 40-homer power. If they were, we wouldn’t call them “the little things.” But it’s possible to do the little things so well that an average hitter becomes, in Swanson’s case, a $25 million-a-year All-Star. Stott is one of the few players who can make that claim. He moved off of shortstop to accommodate Trea Turner after his rookie season, and since then he’s been a top-five defensive second baseman. Or he was, until the Phillies traded for Luis Arraez at the deadline and Stott moved to third base. (Arraez, to drive home an earlier point, is only five months older than Stott.) Stott, who had 83 total innings of professional experience at the hot corner coming into this season — and none since 2022 — has been tremendous at his new position. Statcast has him at 3 FRV in 264 innings, which is about the same, on a per-inning basis, as what Matt Chapman posted in 2021. The eye test backs it up; Stott plays third with a middle infielder’s ambitious range, and his arm has held up to the longer throw across the diamond just fine. Stott is also one of the best basestealers in baseball, if not the best outright. Since 2023, he’s second to Byron Buxton in stolen base percentage (minimum 40 attempts) in a volume that dwarfs his competitors. Stott has 111 steals in 122 attempts over the past four seasons; Buxton is 47-for-50. The only player in the top 20 in success rate with more attempts than Stott is Corbin Carroll, who’s all the way down at 19th. In 2026, Stott has swiped 24 bags without being caught. Only eight players have had a perfect season of 20 or more attempts; only Turner, who went 30-for-30 in 2023, has been perfect on more attempts than Stott. (High-volume stolen base perfection is a bit of a Phillies tradition; Chase Utley went 23-for-23 in 2009 and Realmuto started 21-for-21 in 2022 before getting thrown out on his final attempt.) Stott’s success on the basepaths is surprisingly simple: He’s boiled it down to a simple math problem. Before each series he gets a list of each opposing catcher’s pop times and each opposing pitcher’s times to home plate. If the sum of those numbers is greater than Stott’s run time from first to second, he knows it’s safe to steal. “If the catcher is a 1.95 to 2.0, and I get a good jump, I can be safe if the pitcher’s a 1.3, 1.35,” he explained. “Just kind of doing the math, it takes me 3.3 seconds to get to second on a good jump. I need to make sure the pitchers are over 3.3. If I don’t get a good jump, then I just shut it down. But if [the pitcher’s] in the 1.5s, 1.6s, I’ll go every time.” That level of study and trust in the numbers has paid off. Stott has the eighth-most baserunning runs in the league over the past four seasons. And if you factor in defense, he’s added more than 53 runs of value with his legs and glove over that span. Top Defense and Baserunning Values Since 2023 Through 9/9, minimum 1,000 total plate appearances It’s even more impressive once you factor in the positional adjustment, or lack thereof. Stott is one of two players in the top 10 with fewer than 500 innings at shortstop and catcher. This year, he’s 10th in combined defense and baserunning value, and second among players with zero innings at catcher or shortstop. The one player who’s got him beat in both cases is Crow-Armstrong, who’s in his own class as a non-catcher/shortstop defender. Every great team has superstars, but more than that, great teams have players like this: defense-and-baserunning aces who can play all over the diamond. That’s why the contemporary Dodgers paid so much to get Tommy Edman, and profited so much from Chris Taylor before him. Alternatively, it’s why Edman plays in front of a set of retired numbers that includes Jim Gilliam’s, alongside Duke Snider’s and Sandy Koufax’s. But the Phillies, stable as they’ve been over Stott’s career, have never gotten as close to a title as they did his rookie season. And as Stott went from the face of the youth movement to a dad approaching 30, the delight of a surprise pennant run has turned into palpable public frustration with the team’s inability to get over the top. “The playoffs are a crazy time, but also it’s kind of a toss-up,” Stott said. “You’re rarely winning by five or six runs, like you might do in the regular season — every game is close, and you’ve got to find ways to win those 1-0 or 2-0 games.” The day before we talked, the Phillies had just beaten the Braves 1-0, behind a shutout from Jesús Luzardo, to retain a sliver of a chance of winning the NL East. This was obviously still fresh on Stott’s mind. “Yesterday felt like a playoff game, where if you get guys on, you want to try your absolute hardest to cash them in,” he said. “You saw what Luzardo was doing, but [Grant Holmes] was doing the same thing. It’s scratching and clawing, and once you get that lead, you want to keep your foot on the gas. And if you don’t scratch any more runs across, you’ve got to play better defense and not let them score.” In other words, you have to do the little things. Better than anyone else.