Categories: Analysis

Bryce Harper told Alec Bohm ‘nothing’ during Game 3 — and it worked

Alec Bohm hit the 1,000th homer in World Series history Tuesday. (Cheryl Pursell)

In between a couple home runs that elevated a stadium from extremely loud to downright deafening, Bryce Harper whispered to Alec Bohm.

Harper and Kevin Long had yelled for “Bohmer,” then in the on-deck circle, to meet Harper near the dugout steps for a chat. What did he whisper? We don’t know. They won’t say.

But Harper had seen something in his brief at bat against Lance McCullers Jr. about a minute prior. He’d deposited an 85-mph knuckle curve into a double-digit row beyond the right field wall, so he clearly knew something — and as a general rule, when Bryce Harper talks hitting, you should listen.

Bohm listened. McCullers tried to run a sinker in on Bohm’s hands. Bohm ran it into the first row behind the flowerbeds in left. 3-0, Phillies.

So. What was he told?

He was asked.

“That’s between us.”

And asked again.

He shook his head.

And again.

“Nothing.”

Harper said more, but not really.

“I think anytime you have information, you want to be able to give that to your teammates at any point,” he said. “So anytime I can help my teammates. Throughout the whole season we’ve done that. And, um, yeah.”

OK, let’s speculate. Perhaps it had something to do with McCullers’ pitch selection. The Phillies were expecting a healthy diet of offspeed stuff in Game 3, given that McCullers throws it in some form almost 70% of the time. Then again, Bohm wouldn’t have needed Harper to tell him that — and besides, he homered on a sinker, not the knuckle curve that Harper did.

Maybe, instead, it was about pitch tipping. McCullers allowed just four homers in 47 2/3 innings this regular season. He allowed five homers in 4 1/3 innings on Tuesday. Something must’ve been up.

For the record, McCullers and Astros manager Dusty Baker both said postgame they didn’t believe the righty gave anything away.

“I got whooped,” McCullers said. “End of story.”

Baker: “Sometimes, they just hit you.”

But take a look at the below thread for a counter. The pitch on the left is a 1-0 sinker from McCullers to J.T. Realmuto in the first inning; the pitch on the right is Harper’s homer the next at bat. On the curveball, McCullers’ leg kick carries his left foot quite far from his back leg; it’s noticeably closer to his body on the sinker. On the curveball, McCullers lifts his hands and glove even with his head; it’s considerably lower on the sinker.

It would seem to make sense, if that’s what Harper and Bohm’s conversation was about, that they wouldn’t want to reveal their findings to the entire country. McCullers is in line to start Game 7 if the World Series gets that far, and the intel could benefit the Phillies if the situation arises.

But whether it was about pitch tipping, sequencing or a mere vote of confidence, even if the country couldn’t hear it, Harper determined Bohm needed to. And as a result, the NLCS MVP, who this postseason has done everything imaginable, plus some things unimaginable, is now doing even more.

“That’s what teammates do,” Baker said of Harper. “That’s what good hitters do. They pass on whatever information that they can find and see. Now, whether he passed on information to actually help ’em, that’s between him and his teammates. But, no, that doesn’t surprise me at all. That’s what guys are supposed to do.”

The 1,000th home run in World Series history left Bohm’s bat at 109 mph. It was his first homer in a month. It happened on the first pitch of the at bat, only the fifth pitch Bohm had ever seen from McCullers. (He was 0-for-2 with a pair of groundouts.)

At the very least, whatever Harper told Bohm seemed to help.

Right?

“Maybe,” Bohm conceded. He shrugged his shoulders. Then he smiled.