ARLINGTON — Two years after posting a -0.2 WAR across 115 games played, Alec Bohm racked up 0.3 WAR on Opening Day 2023 alone, according to FanGraphs.
Does the WAR leaderboard after one game matter? Not particularly. But even in a loss, Bohm was so impressive on Opening Day that only Adley Rutschman — he of the 5-for-5 performance for the Baltimore Orioles — and C.J. Cron have higher marks among position players in the category after the season opener.
Bohm homered four times and drove in 10 runs in 20 Grapefruit League games. Having added 15 pounds of muscle in the offseason, Bohm’s Spring Training performance provided a glimpse into why many have long believed that the former first-round pick is capable of hitting for more power than he did over his first three seasons, a period in which he homered just 24 total times in over 1,100 at-bats.
And in his first at-bat of the season, Bohm didn’t do anything to quell buzz that he could emerge as an All-Star caliber hitter in 2023.
He worked a 2-0 count against two-time National League Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom, and then took a 99 mph fastball up in the zone and proceeded to hit a 385-foot home run:
There just aren’t a ton of right-handed hitters capable of taking a deGrom four-seam fastball with rise and hitting it out of the park in right-center field.
“I mean, it’s a great swing,” Nick Castellanos said. “And what was it, a fastball up? [It was a] good swing, smooth and he stayed through it.”
In a conversation with Phillies Nation during Spring Training, both Larry Bowa and Charlie Manuel raved about the development of Bohm. Manuel — the winningest manager in franchise history — said that he believed Bohm was capable of hitting between 25 and 40 home runs per season. That’s a wide range, but one similar to what Jayson Werth did at his peak. And like Werth, Manuel was quick to point out that Bohm is an excellent overall hitter capable of driving the ball out of the park, not necessarily a prototypical power hitter.
And that’s been the fine line that the Phillies have been trying to balance in Bohm’s development since he debuted in August of 2020. Bohm should hit for more power than he has to this point, and part of him reaching his ceiling will be pulling the ball with authority more consistently. But they don’t want him to overhaul his mindset at the plate, because his ability to put the ball in play in a majority of his at-bats and go to the opposite-field is something they want him to couple with increased power.
Manager Rob Thomson said as much after Bohm’s Opening Day performance.
“We don’t really want to change his approach,” Thomson told the media at Globe Life Field. “We want him to be able to use the entire field because that’s what makes him a great hitter. But at the same time, be able to get out in front of some balls when he needs to, and that’s what he’s doing right now.”
In addition to homering in his first at-bat, Bohm also added a double to the opposite field and an RBI single back up the middle in the fifth inning.
From a Phillies perspective, Opening Day was supposed to be about Trea Turner’s debut after signing an 11-year/$300 million deal in free agency and going on a home run hitting tour in the spring. And make no mistake, Turner impressed in his first game as a Phillie, tripling in the third inning to drive in Brandon Marsh and scoring on a wild pitch from deGrom just moments later.
However, the star of the day for the Phillies was Bohm. And Turner was the first to admit how impressive his new teammate was.
“[He has] a lot of confidence and he’s been putting the work in,” Turner said. “He had a great day and just the at-bats in general were really impressive … some two-strike hitting, hitting the ball the other way. We’re gonna need him this year, and that was a big game by him — it was pretty cool.”
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