Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm is in a sophomore slump | Extra Innings

It was a beautiful day out at Coors Field in Denver on Sunday, and it looked for a little while like it was going to be Bryce Harper’s day, too. Through the top half of the fourth inning, the Phillies right fielder had hit a pair of home runs and thrown out a runner at the plate.

And then stuff happened, none of it good for the Phillies.

Colorado scored seven times in the bottom of the fourth and five more times after that to take the rubber game of the series with a 12-2 victory.

It was the 10th time in their last 13 road series that the Phillies came up on the short end, a statistic that dates to the final two road series of the 2019 season, in Cleveland and Washington.

“That’s terrible,” Harper said when informed of that streak of futility away from Citizens Bank Park.

More about their road woes later in our Stat of the Day. The Phillies will begin a four-game series in St. Louis on Monday night with Zack Wheeler on the mound.

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— Bob Brookover (extrainnings@inquirer.com)

Expectations were sky high for Alec Bohm coming into the season, and there is still plenty of reason to believe that the Phillies’ second-year third baseman can have a good year. At the moment, however, he is in a very real slump.

Bohm went hitless in four at-bats Sunday against the Rockies and struck out twice. He went 2-for-11 in the three-game series and struck out five times. His batting average has dipped to .213, his on-base percentage is .259, and his OPS is .579. He also has just four extra-base hits overall and one in his last 11 games.

That prompted the very fair question Sunday about whether Bohm might need a day off.

“He’s scuffling,” manager Joe Girardi said. “It’s something that we can talk about. He doesn’t seem to have his timing right. He has seemed to drive in runs when he has had the opportunity, which is always important. Those always seem to be his best at-bats, but he has scuffled a little bit.”

Bohm is the only Phillies player who has started all 21 games. He has also played every inning of every game, which could be reason enough to give him a day off.

Bohm was the best clutch hitter in baseball a season ago, hitting .452 (19-for-42) with runners in scoring position, while also contributing 18 RBIs in those situations. This season, however, he is hitting just .211 (4-for-19) with runners in scoring position.

For what it’s worth, he is still tied with Didi Gregorius and Rhys Hoskins for the team lead in RBIs. They all have 12.

After his first 21 games a year ago as a rookie, Bohm was batting .280 with a .333 on-base percentage and .760 OPS. He also had five doubles, two home runs and 10 RBIs. In his final 23 games last season, he batted .388 with a .458 on-base percentage and a .988 OPS, hitting six doubles and two home runs. That late-season surge allowed Bohm to finish tied for second in voting for the National League rookie of the year.

One big reason to believe that Bohm will emerge from his current struggle can be found in a Statcast number. Bohm’s hard-hit-ball percentage of 48.1 is tied for the sixth best among major-league third basemen and also ranks among the top 35 hitters in all of baseball. In other words, he has hit in some hard luck.

In case you’re wondering if there is anything to sophomore jinxes, we should point out that Seattle’s Kyle Lewis, the 2020 AL rookie of the year, started this season on the injured list with a deep bone bruise in his right knee and is 2-for-16 since returning. Milwaukee reliever Devin Williams, the 2020 NL rookie of the year after allowing one earned run and striking out 53 batters in 27 innings, has a 5.87 ERA in eight appearances this season.

Nick Maton made his major-league debut filling in at shortstop for Didi Gregorius last week, then started three straight games at second base over the weekend in place of the injured Jean Segura. He hit in all six games, and Scott Lauber wonders if the Phillies would consider giving him and his .500 batting average a shot at being their starting center fielder.

Thanks to a couple of home runs from Rhys Hoskins, the Phillies did salvage the middle game of their three-game series in Colorado.

Andrew McCutchen went hitless in four at-bats Sunday, dropping his batting average to .154. Is it too soon to start worrying about the veteran left fielder?

Mainland High School’s Chase Petty has a 100-mph fastball and a really good chance of being a first-round pick during the baseball draft in July. The Phillies pick 13th, and he likely will be available.

Gregorius made his second error of the series and fifth of the season in Sunday’s loss, but Girardi believes the shortstop’s uncharacteristic gaffes are correctable.

Tonight: Zack Wheeler faces Adam Wainwright in series opener at St. Louis, 7:45 p.m.

Tomorrow: Zach Eflin against Carlos Martinez, 7:45 p.m.

Wednesday: Johan Oviedo will make his first start of the season for St. Louis, 7:45 p.m.

Thursday: Aaron Nola pitches series finale in St. Louis, 1:15 p.m.

Friday: Phillies return home for the start of a three-game series against the New York Mets, 7:05 p.m.

We hate to belabor the point, but the Phillies continue to play horrendous baseball on the road. With Sunday’s lopsided loss, they fell to 2-7 on the road this season. They have lost six straight road series dating to last season and have just one road series win among their last 13 dating to the end of the 2019 season.

On Sept. 18, 2019, the Phillies won, 4-1, in Atlanta to assure a series victory over the Braves and improve to a respectable 35-37 on the road that season. Two nights later, after losing the series finale with the Braves, the Phillies traveled to Cleveland and lost two out of three games to the Indians. Then they went to Washington and were swept in a five-game series.

In 2020, the Phillies played 16 of their first 17 games at home and lost their one road game to the New York Yankees. Not sure we can call that a series, but we can definitely call it a loss.

After that, the Phillies split a two-game series in Boston, lost two games in Buffalo to Toronto and lost two of three in Atlanta before winning their only road series last season by sweeping two games in Washington on Aug. 25 and 26. After that, they split a four-game series against the Mets in New York, lost five out of seven in Miami, lost three out of four in Washington and were swept in three games by Tampa Bay when one win would have punched their ticket to the postseason.

So since that Sept. 18, 2019 win in Atlanta, the Phillies are 12-34 on the road.

In the words of Bryce Harper, “that’s terrible.”

Send questions by email or on Twitter @brookob.

Question: Can Nicky M. bat leadoff? — from jf (@philliefan726) on Twitter

Answer: I’ve heard that you are quite an obsessive Phillies fan, jf, and you’ve raised an interesting question. My colleague Scott Lauber is wondering whether Maton could solve the Phillies’ problem in center fielder, and now you are wondering if he could solve their problem in the leadoff spot, where McCutchen is in a terrible slump.

I’m guessing that Girardi will not put the rookie in that position this early in his career, but if McCutchen continues to get on base just 30% of the time, the Phillies are going to have to find some sort of long-term solution. Maton obviously isn’t going to hit .500, but he’s also obviously not intimidated by big-league pitching. If he’s still hot and McCutchen is still struggling at the end of this road trip, I’d definitely consider Maton in the leadoff spot. I’d also let him play center field whenever Segura returns.

Question: Where do you see Phillies going for bottom-of-rotation solutions: free agents (Hamels?)/trades, players within organization, or stick with Moore and Anderson? — from Sam (@wiseastatine) on Twitter

Answer: I think in the short term, Matt Moore and Chase Anderson will continue to get the opportunity to prove they can be competent solutions as back-end starters in the rotation, but the leash has definitely shortened for both. If they’re still struggling to cover five innings on May 26, I’d be shocked if they were both still in the rotation.

If I were the Phillies, I’d start using Spencer Howard in one of those spots and I’d also start searching for help on the trade market. If the Phillies want to end their playoff drought, they cannot let the rotation problem linger too long.