Categories: Phillies Nuggets with Tim Kelly

Phillies Nuggets: Has this been a breakout year for Alec Bohm?

Has Alec Bohm taken enough of a step forward in 2023? (Brandon Sloter/Icon Sportswire)

Spring Training buzz about a potential power breakout from Alec Bohm was doused in lighter fluid when the Philadelphia Phillies corner infielder crushed a 385-foot home run off of two-time NL Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom in his first at-bat of the regular season.

But for as impressive as the Opening Day blast against the Texas Rangers from Bohm was, if you thought he had a chance to hit 28-32 home runs in 2023, that hasn’t materialized.

If you’re a believer in Bohm, there’s plenty you can point to as evidence that the former No. 3 overall pick has taken a step towards realizing his All-Star potential at the plate in 2023. But if you’re a skeptic, it also wouldn’t be hard to formulate a case that Bohm is a player with great raw talent that flashes his upside enough to keep you intrigued with no real guarantee that the teases will ever turn into consistency.

It’s impossible to deny how productive Bohm has been with runners in scoring position this season, something that has been a theme early in his career. Even after going 0-for-2 in said situations yesterday, Bohm is still hitting .355 with runners in scoring position this season.

In large part because of his success with ducks on the pond, Bohm has 91 RBIs in 2023, giving him a shot to eclipse 100 RBIs before the regular season concludes. Are RBIs the best metric to determine value of an offense player? No. But is there something to be said for a player that has a .318 career batting average with runners in scoring positions over parts of four seasons? You bet.

The flip side of that, though, is that the bulk of your at-bats come without runners in scoring position. And in those situations, Bohm is batting a fairly pedestrian .256 in 2023. For his career, Bohm is hitting .264 without runners in scoring position. Bohm has just a 6.6% walk percentage in his career. So when he isn’t hitting — unlike players who walk at a high clip like Kyle Schwarber, Rhys Hoskins and Bryce Harper — there’s just not much offensive value to fall back on for Bohm.

Ironically, Bohm did hit a 407-foot home run into the third deck in left field with no one on base during the eighth inning at Busch Stadium in Sunday’s loss to the Cardinals. It’s the type of swing that keeps you intrigued. If you combine Bohm’s ability to put the ball in play with runners in scoring position with 25-30 home runs a season, he’ll be an extremely valuable offensive player.

The problem is that even though Bohm has a new career-high with 17 home runs in 2023, he’s got 41 career home runs across 1,638 at-bats. Bohm is 6-foot-5, 218 pounds, and when he does hit a home run, it’s almost always in excess of 400 feet. This isn’t trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. The best version of Bohm wouldn’t become a Schwarber-type three-true-outcomes player, but he would hit home runs at a higher clip. With that said, there’s no guarantee Bohm ever reaches his ceiling at the plate — there’s plenty of toolsy players in MLB history who showed enough to have long careers but never became All-Star-caliber hitters.

Additionally, while it’s true that Bohm has worked incredibly hard to improve defensively at third base, just about all metrics suggest he’s still an underwhelming fielder at the hot corner. His zero outs above average are quite the improvement over the -9 he posted a year ago. But Bohm still has -8 defensive runs saved at third base this season. That’s actually quite a bit better than the -17 he had a season ago, but it’s still bad.

Bohm is a very good athlete, and you’ll see occasion Gold Glove-caliber plays for him at third base. You’ll also see inexplicable plays from Bohm like the miscue he had on Sept. 1 in Milwaukee, that may very well have cost them a win over the Brewers.

Bohm’s ability to play first base this season has been valuable in overcoming the torn left ACL that has prevented Hoskins from playing at all in 2023. But there’s no evidence to suggest Bohm could be a strong option on an everyday basis at first base, as he has -2 defensive runs saved and -5 outs above average there this season.

So what do you have in Bohm? Well, it depends on your perspective. For some, this version of Bohm is plenty enough, given how much success he’s had at driving in runs. The 2023 Phillies would definitely be worse without Bohm, it’s just a matter of how much.

But it still feels like there’s another level for Bohm to reach as an offensive player. From 2008-2013, Jayson Werth — a player Bohm has often been compared to — hit 137 home runs and posted an .856 OPS. He averaged just shy of 23 home runs over that period, despite missing half of the 2012 season. Having that type of six-year stretch feels like a realistic best-case scenario for Bohm. But he’s got a ways to go before getting there.

To be fair, that six-year stretch for Werth began when he was 29. Bohm turned 27 last month. He won’t even become eligible for arbitration until next year. There’s still plenty of time for Bohm to reach his ceiling, because he’s unquestionably taken a step forward in 2023. We’d argue he’s come up short, though, of being one baseball’s breakout stars this season, which seemed to be a possibility at the outset of the campaign.