WATCH: Alec Bohm gives Phillies the go-ahead run on a double play ball that a he should have smashed into the Ghost Energy Deck

Alec Bohm. SMH.

Bottom of the sixth. Game tied 2-2. Harper singled to lead off the inning. Marsh ripped his third single of the night to right field and Harper busted it to third.

Two on, nobody out, go-ahead run 90 feet away. Bohm steps in against Vasquez. This is the spot. This is the moment where a middle-of-the-order hitter earns his paycheck. Runner on third, nobody out, a chance to blow the game open.

Alec Bohm grounded into a double play…lol

Out in front 😤 pic.twitter.com/u1QXnljG7Z

— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) June 3, 2026

The winning run scored because Harper was running hard and came home from third on the 6-4-3. Not because Bohm did anything productive. The Phillies took the lead because Harper’s legs saved the at-bat, not because Bohm’s bat did anything useful with it.

Look at the pitch location on the double-play ball. That pitch was middle of the plate. Hittable. Drivable. Crushable. If Alec Bohm wasn’t the softest third baseman in all of Major League Baseball, that ball lands in the Ghost Energy Deck and the Phillies are up 5-2 instead of scratching out a 3-2 lead on a ground ball to short.

Seriously. That pitch was a gift.

A pitcher hanging on in a tough inning, trying to make a pitch, and leaving it over the plate for the cleanup hitter. Most power-hitting third basemen in the majors drive that pitch 400 feet. Bohm rolled over on it and hit it on the ground to the shortstop. Two runs erased from the basepaths.

A potential crooked number turned into a double play that happened to score a run only because Harper was already standing on third.

That’s Alec Bohm in a nutshell.

He’ll give you a heads-up defensive play in the eighth where he pump-faked Tatis into the third out to kill a rally. Smart play. Good instincts. The kind of thing you love from your third baseman in a one-run game. He’ll extend a hitting streak and put together at-bats that look professional. He’ll make you think he’s figuring it out.

Always keep your head on a swivel pic.twitter.com/4uYkh7SYD3

— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) June 3, 2026

Then Alec Bohm come up in the biggest spot of the game with runners on and nobody out and ground into a double play on a pitch that was begging to be hit over the wall.

That’s the Bohm experience. Competent enough to stay in the lineup. Soft enough to leave you screaming at the television.

The Phillies Are Winning on Fumes and Everyone Knows It

Three runs or fewer in four of the last six wins. Twelve consecutive games without scoring five runs. The Phillies have won half of those games because the pitching has been so outrageously good that three runs is enough most nights.

The rotation and bullpen are performing at a historically elite level and the offense is contributing just enough to not completely waste it.

Second-to-last in the majors in hits. Second-to-last in batting average. The Phillies are winning baseball games with an offense that statistically belongs on a team fighting to stay out of last place.

The only reason they’re 31-29 instead of 25-35 is because Sanchez, Wheeler, Luzardo, and Nola are giving them five to seven shutout or near-shutout innings every night and the bullpen is slamming the door behind them.

Harper said after the game that the offense will get untracked. I hope he’s right. I really do. Because right now this team is winning on the thinnest margins imaginable. One bad bullpen inning, one fewer Harper homer, one less Marsh single, and these close wins turn into close losses.

The pitching is papering over an offense that can’t score. The pitching is dragging this roster to wins that the bats don’t deserve. That works in June. It does not work in October.

Alec Bohm Is the Symbol of the Offensive Problem

The worst part about it, is that every Phillies fan with half of a brain knew it heading into the 2026 MLB season, too.

Bohm has been better since Mattingly’s two-day reset. The hitting streak. The improved at-bats. The competent defense. All of it is real and I’m not going to pretend the improvement hasn’t happened but “better” for Bohm still means grounding into double plays on middle-middle pitches in the biggest moments of the game.

“Better” still means soft contact on hittable pitches that other third basemen in this league drive for extra bases. “Better” still means a player who looks like he’s figured it out for a week and then reminds you in one at-bat why he was at the bottom of the trust tree in the first place.

The Phillies need Bohm to be a run producer. Not a batting average compiler who hits singles and occasionally doubles. A run producer. A guy who comes up with runners on base and does damage.

A guy who gets a hanger over the plate in a tie game with runners on and puts it into the seats instead of rolling it to the shortstop. Alec Bohm hits it on the ground and the Phillies score a run on a double play instead of four on a grand slam.

The offensive ceiling of this team is directly tied to whether Alec Bohm and the right-handed hitters can produce power in run-scoring situations.

Right now they can’t.

Bohm’s improved batting average is nice. His ability to make contact is fine. What’s missing is impact. What’s missing is the kind of at-bat where a middle-of-the-order hitter gets a mistake pitch with runners on base and makes the other team pay for it.

Tuesday night was a win. The run scored. The Phillies took the lead and the bullpen held it. But that at-bat from Bohm should have been a three-run homer that blew the game open. Instead it was a double-play grounder that the Phillies survived because Harper was already at third.

The difference between those two outcomes is the difference between a team that can score and a team that can’t. Right now, the Phillies can’t. They just happen to have pitching good enough to make it not matter most nights.

The Phillies Formula Has an Expiration Date

Last year the Phillies were 55-26 at home with the best home winning percentage in baseball. They’re 15-16 at the Bank right now. Last year the offense produced crooked numbers regularly and gave the pitching staff breathing room. This year the offense is suffocating and the pitching staff is performing CPR every night to keep the team alive.

You cannot win in October scoring three runs a game. You almost certainly cannot beat the Dodgers in October with Bohm grounding into double plays on hittable pitches. You cannot go deep into the postseason with the second-worst batting average in baseball and a right-handed lineup that produces replacement-level offense against anyone who throws from the left side.

The pitching is buying the Phillies time. Time for the offense to wake up. Time for Dombrowski to make a move at the deadline. Time for Turner to get his average above .225. Time for Garcia to start hitting or get replaced. Time for Bohm to start driving the ball with authority instead of rolling over on pitches he should be destroying.

I’ve been saying Mike Trout to Philly for years and now that the right side of the plate is a disaster, everyone is finally catching up >>

The clock is ticking. The formula of “score two or three runs and let the pitching carry us” works until it doesn’t. When it stops working, the Phillies won’t have time to fix it. The fix has to start now. With the bats. With the right-handed hitters. With Bohm specifically.

Stop hitting the ball on the ground in run-scoring situations. Start putting pitches over the wall when the pitcher gives you something to hit. That’s the difference between a team that wins 90 games and a team that gets bounced in the first round again.

The pitching can’t do this alone forever.

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