PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Alec Bohm got the day off Thursday in hopes that the Phillies third baseman can reset a dreadful start to the season.<\/p>\n
Edmundo Sosa, who delivered a go-ahead two-run single Wednesday night, started at third. Interim manager Don Mattingly hopes a day to change up his routine can benefit Bohm.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, we want to just let him get a reset day,\u201d Mattingly said. \u201cSosa is swinging good, feel good with him pretty much at any time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bohm is batting .159 with one home run and just four extra base hits in 141 plate appearances over 35 games. He\u2019s slashing .159\/.227\/.206 for a microscopic OPS of .433.<\/p>\n
He has just 20 hits this season. His OPS+ is 21; major league average is 100. Per FanGraphs, he has the fifth-lowest WAR among the 1,034 players to appear in a big league game this year. The recently cut Taijuan Walker is 14th; San Diego\u2019s Nick Castellanos is 27th.<\/p>\n
Mattingly reiterated his belief in Bohm, who turns 30 in August and is out of contract at the end of the year. The 2024 All-Star hit .287 last year with 11 homers, 59 RBIs and an OPS of .741.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure he\u2019s pressing,\u201d Mattingly said. \u201cHe wants to do well. Just trying hard, for sure. He\u2019s a guy that, I\u2019ve said it probably a lot at this point, that he\u2019s going to hit, and I believe that until the day I\u2019m not on this Earth, that he\u2019s going to hit. And we\u2019re going to need him to be himself. He\u2019s going to get a lot of big hits for us. You guys are going to forget what happened in May when he\u2019s hitting down the stretch and driving in runs. So he\u2019s part of our club. He\u2019s going to. He\u2019s going to be a part of it. And he\u2019s going to hit.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s actually been worse for Bohm: He was batting .128 on April 21, making his .208 average in 13 games since a relative surge. He has only five multi-hit games this year.<\/p>\n
Bohm started and went 0-for-2 in Wednesday night\u2019s 6-3 win over the Athletics with a left-handed starter in Jeffre Springs on the mound. He was lifted for pinch-hitter Bryson Stott against right-handed reliever Justin Sterner.<\/p>\n
Mattingly admitted that as a player, he preferred to try to hit his way out of slumps rather than sit his way through them. With the Phillies looking for a sweep of the Athletics and having won eight of nine games, Thursday was a chance to help Bohm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t look at things like, oh, I\u2019ll just stop hitting; that\u2019ll help me hit,\u201d Mattingly said. \u201cThey\u2019re thinking, I\u2019ve got to keep working, and then I\u2019m going to hit. So you don\u2019t get guys at this level that have got here without saying, got to keep working, got to keep going. And really wouldn\u2019t want it any other way. Sometimes you would encourage them to just take a little bit of a step back and in those terms, take a day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Alec Bohm got the day off Thursday in hopes that the Phillies third baseman can reset…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":780868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1266,2083,62,3101,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-780867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-philadelphia-phillies","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-top-stories-tmc","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116536313600785689","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}