Among the star players who catapulted the Phillies to the top of the NL East, Alec Bohm is the core.
We may only be a month and a half into the baseball season, but Bohm is having a breakout campaign, hitting .343 entering play Sunday — tied for the fourth-highest average in the baseball.
Bohm released some mind-blowing advanced hitting metrics. He holds a plus-18 strikeout value and an xBA of .303, ranking in the top 4 percent of hitters.
Bohm leads the Phillies in on-base percentage heading into their first meeting Monday with the Mets, who begin the series with Sean Manaea on the mound.
Manaea has a rocky relationship with the strike zone as he doesn’t draw many chases or whiffs and walks at a 12.5 percent rate. He leans heavily on his sinker – a pitch that Bohm has made excellent contact with.
Bohm generates most of his production on fastballs. The corner infielder owns a .456 xSLG against them with a pair of homers.
But it’s not so much power that defines Bohm’s game right now; these are the singles that he accumulates hand in hand. His exit velocity hasn’t improved from any other season, while maintaining consistent quality of contact and widening gaps with stellar plate discipline.
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Manaea’s inability to make takedowns on his own gives Bohm an advantage for a few more shots on Monday.
THE PLAY: Alec Bohm on 1.5 bases (+118, BetRivers)
New York Post
