To be a complete big-league hitter is no easy task.
Power, contact, discipline — plus the ability to handle same-sided pitching.
Entering his age-28 campaign, the latter has been the biggest knock on Bryson Stott in recent seasons. Even within Phillies brass.
“He hasn’t hit left-handers quite as well,” Dave Dombrowski told 94WIP on Wednesday. “He’s done it in the past, but then you’ve got Edmundo Sosa playing with them, who hits left-handed pitching very well.”
In 2025, the lefty-swinging Las Vegas native slashed .225/.287/.288 against southpaws. His .575 OPS ranked eighth-worst among left-handed hitters in those matchups with a minimum of 120 plate appearances.
The average qualifying OPS for lefties was .697.
It’s early — too early for Clearwater temperatures to consistently crack 80 degrees — but Stott has shown something in same-sided matchups through the first week of Grapefruit League play.
On Thursday, Stott fell behind 0-2 against Nationals lefty Jake Eder, worked the count full, and drove a high-eighties slider a couple of inches above the zone the opposite way, sneaking it over the left-field wall at BayCare Ballpark.
Down 1-0 to the Nationals in the first, Bryson Stott sends one just over the left field fence at Baycare Ballpark for a solo homer run.
A strange pitch to do any damage with, let alone hit out of the park. If that’s Stott fighting off a full-count pitch early in spring, that’s a meaningful sign.
It even came a day after Dombrowski noted that Stott won’t hit opposite-field home runs regularly. That’s likely true. They’ll take it anyway.
The timing kept working in Stott’s favor. The Marlins sent lefty Robby Snelling to the mound Friday, MLB’s No. 5 left-handed pitching prospect.
On a 1-0 count, Snelling hung a breaking ball over the middle of the plate, and Stott barreled it into the right-center gap for a double, scoring J.T. Realmuto from third.
Off the bat at 102.4 mph, 358 feet off the wall.
It’s back-to-back days with an extra-base hit. Stott had just five against lefties in all of 2025.
His hands are getting set and in a good position at the point of contact. The front half looks clean.
A late-season adjustment last year helped turn Stott into one of the better offensive second basemen in baseball over the final stretch.
“I think it was the change he made in the middle of July with his hands,” Thomson told reporters in October. “From that point on, he really had quality at-bats. Those are the type of bats I saw back in 2022 and in the Fall League in 2021. Hopefully, he carries that over.”
Over the final 50 games, Stott batted .310, 12th-best among qualifiers, with an .880 OPS.
Stay hot, Stott! Bryson’s ninth home run of the season is a two-run shot that ties the game at three in the sixth.
His numbers against lefties in that span climbed to a .262/.304/.705 line in 46 plate appearances, right around league average for left-handed batters.
Not overwhelming, but given how well he was hitting overall, the Phillies would take that production in 2026.
There’s precedent for more, too. In his career year in 2023, when Stott hit .280 overall with a .747 OPS, he hit .282 against left-handers.
The question now is how the Phillies handle the split. Do they give Stott more reps against southpaws and let him work through it, or do they lean into a platoon with Edmundo Sosa?
Thomson didn’t commit Friday.
“We’ll see. Sosa hits lefties so well,” he said. “It’s hard to keep him out of the lineup.”
He’s not wrong. Sosa hit .318 with an .895 OPS versus left-handers last season. Otto Kemp has also gotten work at second, slugging .462 against lefties in his rookie campaign.
The Phillies would call that a good problem to have. What they really want, though, is for their former top prospect to become the complete, everyday player they always believed he could be. The defense and speed were never in question.
“That’s a good sign,” Thomson said of Stott reaching base each time he’s faced a southpaw. “If he’s hitting lefties, that means he’s staying on the ball and using the field. He’s looked very, very good.”