Alec Bohm has never shied away from expressing his frustrations on the baseball field, but historically, those displays of frustration have usually been directed internally.
Sunday elicited an uncharacteristic exception, and it was far from unwarranted.
Bohm had run the count full with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the seventh, the Phillies trailing by two, when Twins reliever Caleb Thielbar threw a fastball that ran in on Bohm.
It was the obvious Ball 4 that wasn’t.
Home plate umpire Alex MacKay rung up Bohm despite the pitch clearly missing inside, by a good margin. Bohm — who had already started to take his base — slammed his bat down in disgust. MacKay immediately let Bohm know he’d be fined, before ejecting him when Bohm subsequently slammed his helmet down as he walked back to the dugout.
It was, without a doubt, a pivotal moment in the game. The Phillies would’ve cut the lead in half to give Bryce Harper an opportunity to tie it, or perhaps more.
“I mean, you’ve got Bryce Harper coming up with the bases loaded down one. So, as much as that affects the game, we’ll never know what would have happened,” Bohm said after the game.
Instead, Harper’s next at bat came in the eighth. And it ended on another blown call from MacKay.
It was less egregious, but it appeared to miss down and out — and besides, the previous inning removed any benefit of the doubt. An enraged Harper argued with MacKay before Rob Thomson emerged from the dugout and did the same, getting himself ejected as well.
It’s hard to say the Phillies fully blew the opportunity in the seventh, given the call, but they didn’t help their case before Bohm’s at bat. Jake Cave and Garrett Stubbs had singled to put runners on the corners with one out, and Johan Rojas was hit by a pitch to load the bases, but Kyle Schwarber popped out to the infield on a Thielbar meatball for the second out.
The Phillies also blew an opportunity in the second — though that one was fully self-inflicted — in which Schwarber played a central role as well. Bryson Stott walked and Cave singled to put runners on the corners with one out, but Stubbs struck out on four pitches, three of which were out of the zone.
Still, it’s hard not to come back to Bohm getting rung up to end the bottom of the seventh inning, rather than what should have been ball four and erased the zero that the Phillies instead finished the day with in the runs column.
“We’re trying to win a game, big spot and I felt like I did all I could do. And I felt like the bat was kind of taken out of my hands,” Bohm admitted.
“But, it’s just a bunch of humans out there and mistakes happen. It is what it is.”
Tim Kelly contributed to this story.
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