Max Kepler’s Walk-Off Blast Propels Twins to Victory—Watch the Clutch Homer Now

PHILADELPHIA — Max Kepler’s first season in red pinstripes continues to gather momentum, and Saturday night’s fireworks in Sacramento felt like a turning point. With the Phillies down a run in the ninth, the 32-year-old launched a 410-foot rocket to right-center for his sixth homer of 2025, knotting the score and setting up an eventual 9-6 victory over the Athletics. A reinvented swing is fueling the surge. Hitting coach Kevin Long spent the winter comparing fresh video to Kepler’s 2019 breakout with Minnesota and rebuilt the left-hander’s mechanics around a more pronounced bat tip and an attack angle geared for pulled fly balls. The pair met twice in Arizona, then fine-tuned the stance in Clearwater by moving Kepler closer to the plate to punish outside fastballs. The payoff shows up all over the stat sheet: • Hard-hit rate: 51.2 % (career high) • Slugging percentage: .455 (2nd on club) • OPS: .796, trailing only Kyle Schwarber among Phillies regulars Underlying metrics back the eye test. His pulled-fly-ball rate is up to 23.3 %, the best since that 36-homer campaign six years ago, and Statcast measured Saturday’s blast at 109 mph off the bat. Add in a 29.1 % pull rate on grounders and there’s room for even more lift as weak rollers turn into line drives. Health is a key variable. A partially detached abdominal muscle sapped Kepler’s torque last summer, but the 6-foot-4 outfielder reported to camp “ripped and shredded,” in Long’s words, and has stayed off the injury report. Better mobility is translating to quicker reactions in left field, where he owns three defensive runs saved. The lone caveat is a soft platoon: Kepler is crushing right-handers (.874 OPS) yet has just 24 plate appearances against lefties. To bridge that gap, he has begun requesting extra BP rounds against Long’s southpaw tosses, hoping to convince manager Rob Thomson he’s more than a strong-side specialist. With series against two right-heavy rotations—the Giants and Cubs—on deck, Kepler’s hot streak could stretch well into June. If the contact quality holds and the Phillies keep riding their seven-game winning streak, the former “Bomba Squad” slugger might finally replicate that All-Star-caliber ceiling in South Philly. And for a club chasing its first division crown since 2011, Max Kepler’s reemergence couldn’t be better timed.