The former daycare standouts turned struggling adults are facing an uphill battle to be consistent contributors in the Phillies lineup
As the Phillies season continues to chug along, the early season yields way to better descriptions of what this team is and will be. The starters are fantastic, the bullpen is an adventure, and your top-end guys in the lineup are precisely that. Schwarber, Turner, Harper, and Castellanos are all off to solid starts and will continue to be the backbone of production for this squad. However, a worrying trend that has carried over from 2023 and 2024, for that matter, is the production outside of those core four guys. Stott, Kepler, Bohm, Marsh, and Realmuto have been mediocre to be kind. Stott and Kepler get a little credit as they regularly have good at-bats and have maintained OBPs over .330. Stott specifically gives you Gold Glove defense at second, and Kepler is playing a new position on a new team here in 2025. You can give JT some grace if you want as well, as he is clearly on the decline and is still playing the most physically demanding position in the sport super well. Of this group, two guys have been noticeably frustrating. They are the two that maybe fans and the team expected the most out of, and that would be Alec Bohm and Brandon Marsh. Both players have been outright terrible so far this year. They both came into this season after interesting off-seasons. For Marsh, the Phillies made it clear that they believe in him with their lack of moves this offseason to replace him and even the team saying they see an All-Star in him as the season got underway. For Bohm, he had a tumultuous end of season that saw him get benched for a game during the NLDS vs the Mets, where he had a complete breakdown. However, after an offseason of trade conversations, it became clear that the Phillies still trusted him, and he had the opportunity to prove his haters wrong.
Bohm has been the same player so far this year that got him benched in the playoffs last year. Comically uncompetitive at-bats, like his four out, five pitches seen day over the weekend, that have left him as an almost automatic out. It wasn’t always like this. Going into last year, many people were still high on Bohm blossoming into a quality contributor, and for the first half of 2024, that was the case. Bohm was remarkably good for the first half of the season, hitting 11 home runs and earning the start at 3B for the NL All-Star team, earning more votes than Shohei Ohtani in the process! However, since then, it has been a complete disaster. Dating back to the All-Star Break in 2024, including the playoffs, Bohm only has 4 home runs in 244 at-bats, while hitting .237. His opening day double has been his only extra base hit of the year in 45 at-bats.
It is ridiculous at this point that Rob Thomson is keeping Bohm in the high-leverage lineup spots that he is. The desire to leave him in the lineup behind key guys like Bryce leaves those guys exposed as they know Bohm is an easy out and, in turn, throws the higher quality hitters nothing. It is also unfair to Bohm, who is facing this high pressure at bats while being completely lost at the plate. The biggest problem with Bohm, though, more than anything else, is that he continues to be seemingly completely unable to control his emotions. He is so easily frustrated, and he carries that with him to the plate over and over again. It is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy as his emotions cause him to have bad at-bats, and then the cycle repeats over and over again. In his last five games, Bohm has two hits and has struck out 6 times. That is it, no other production. He only has one walk so far this year. The Phillies’ backup catcher, Rafael Marchán, has walked four times in five at-bats. Bohm, at times, has been good at not letting his frustration carry into the field, but just like the tail end of last year, he is proving unable to do that and once again is carrying his frustration into the field, and his defense has taken a hit. With Bohm, unlike Marsh, it is so clearly all mental. He is a super talented baseball player who is only stopped by himself. That visible frustration that impacts his play has become intolerable, though. Bohm is not a child. He is entering year six in the bigs and has played over 600 career MLB games. He turns 29 in August. He is three years older than Bryce Harper was when he signed that mega deal with the team. The visible frustration surely doesn’t help the vibes of the rest of the group either. At this point, Bohm needs to be buried in the bottom half of the lineup until he clears his head and rights the ship, something he is capable of but seemingly doesn’t have the toolkit to do at the moment.
That takes us to the outfield with Brandon Marsh. Despite the long beard, Marsh is “relatively” inexperienced at the MLB level, having played just about half the big league games as Bohm. His first real big league season was in 2022 when he was traded to Philadelphia. Marsh had a solid 2023 and a down 2024. However, the clock is ticking on Marsh as well as here in 2025. He is off to an anemic start as he is striking out in 36% of his at-bats and has an OPS of .523. Interestingly enough, Marsh has been okay against lefties this season and has struggled against righties with an ops nearly .200 points higher than that vs righties. In 12 plate appearances, he has two hits and three walks. However, he also has struck out five of those twelve times. While it might not mean anything, Marsh’s numbers when he plays in LF (a dramatically small sample size) are vastly better than his numbers in CF. Marsh is a league-average CF but was a Gold Glove nominee in LF last year for the Phillies, so there might be something there. Marsh is better at working counts than Bohm but is often equally unproductive in the end. Maybe he just needs time to play, and the Phillies are giving him exactly that. Marsh is capable of righting this terrible start. However, he is fighting career trends that may suggest he is hamstrung from being a truly great hitter. He might be better off as a platoon OF, but his platoon mate isn’t here, and it will be on Marsh to figure it out while playing every day. On the positive side, he does not possess the mental shortcomings that Bohm does. He is the same guy, regardless of how good or bad he is playing. It also does not impact his at-bats at all.
How far the Phillies go this season will be directly tied to what type of production these two, and the non-top-end guys, can produce. The Phillies have put a ton of eggs in the Marsh and Bohm baskets. It was shown in the Phillies’ lack of OF moves that they believe in Marsh, and the fact that Bohm is still here is proof enough that the Phillies trust him at 3B. The players need to start delivering. These two are fan favorites, which helps barrier the pressure they might feel, especially amongst a Phillies fan base who wants the best for its players, showing support instead of anger in failure over recent seasons, but if the production still doesn’t come around, they will feel it as the season progresses. Marsh probably gets a little more leeway, but the clock is truly ticking on Alec Bohm. It is far too early into the season to make any real assumptions. Even just turn to the Phillies’ recent history as in 2022, they stumbled to the playoffs and won the pennant, and last year, they were the best team for most of the season and got pounded in the first round. So, with that in mind, it would be unfair to cast out Marsh and Bohm already, but needless to say, these two will need to produce, or the Phillies will have to look elsewhere in the not-so-distant future.