Breaking: American baseball third baseman Alec Bohm passed away in a car accident just now at…
Alec Bohm, the third baseman, deserves some of the credit for the Phillies’ impressive 16–10 start in 2024. He is off to a scorching–hot start at the plate.
With a hitting line of.333/.423/.556, the lanky corner infielder has made 104 trips to the plate over the course of 26 games this season. With a wRC+ of 170 as a result, he has outperformed the league average hitter by 70% so far this season. That puts him as the 12th best qualified hitter in the majors thus far this early in the season.
He most likely can’t hold this level of heat for very long. This season, he is hitting.386 on balls in play, considerably above both the league average of.290 and his lifetime rate of.324. His exit velocity metrics are comparable to those from prior seasons, so looking forward, the BABIP is probably going to regress a little. But he’s also made some progress in the area of plate discipline that might be more long-lasting, given that they follow a growth trend that dates back a few years.
As a prospect in 2019, Bohm progressed from Low-A to High-A to Double-A minor league ranks. In just 13.5% of his plate appearances did he strike out, walking in 10.6% of them. His eye at the plate had been commended by prospective evaluators, and those numbers matched that. In those minor league levels that year, he hit.305/.378/.518 for a 161 wRC+.
Bohm made a major league debut that launched him into the spotlight during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. For a 138 wRC+, he hit.338/.400/.481. Although his 20% strikeout rate and 8.9% walk rate weren’t as high as they were the year before in the minors, it was to be expected for a player making the jump from Triple-A to the major leagues for the first time.
However, it appears that the league made changes the following year, since Bohm had a terrible sophomore slump in 2021. 26.6% of his 417 plate appearances that year resulted in a strikeout. His walk-rate dropped to 7.4% as well. With just seven home runs in the season, his line of.247/.305/.342 and 77 wRC+ were quite low. He spent somewhat more than a month on the farm from late August to late September after being optioned to the minors.
