There are baseball questions, and then there are Philadelphia baseball questions. The first kind has answers. The second kind has chapters. And in this city, as the days get shorter and the hot stove glow turns from warm to white-hot, one chapter keeps getting rewritten every winter:
What, exactly, are the Phillies supposed to do with Alec Bohm?
It is one of those questions that refuses to stay buried. You think you’ve solved it, or at least talked it into submission, and then November rolls around, the non-tender deadline sneaks onto the calendar, and suddenly the whole debate is back like it never left. By Friday at 8 p.m., teams must decide which arbitration-eligible players they’ll tender contracts to. Bohm is not in danger of being non-tendered — that’s not the mystery. The mystery is everything that comes next.
Because if you squint at the Phillies’ infield, you can see something bubbling under the surface. There are ways to make it better. There are ways to make it star-studded. There are ways to make it look more like the kind of group that can push a team deeper into October than the last three seasons have allowed. But all of those ways run into the same problem: there isn’t a single open spot.
Bryce Harper is at first. Bryson Stott is at second. Trea Turner is at shortstop. Alec Bohm is at third. Four players, four positions, no wiggle room. No matter who the Phillies might want to add — and this winter, there are names on the market big enough to make the walls shake — someone has to move to make room.
In the front office hallways, it’s not hard to piece together the conversations. Bryce Harper saw fewer pitches in the strike zone in 2025 than any hitter in baseball. That is not a fun statistic. That is not a sustainable statistic. And for a team with championship ambitions, it is a loud siren demanding change. Protecting Harper has become something close to a moral imperative. If that protection doesn’t come from the outfield, it almost certainly has to come from the infield. And that, inevitably, leads back to Bohm.
He is 29 now, old enough to have been through every chapter of this debate and still young enough to feel like he’s somewhere in the middle of his baseball identity. Last season he spent most of the year hitting behind Harper, as he has done for long stretches before. His slash line — .287/.331/.409 — was neither disappointing nor definitive, a portrait of a player who does many things well but still manages to leave evaluators arguing long into the night.
He missed 42 games with injuries. He hit 11 home runs. He drove in 59 runs after driving in 97 the two seasons before. He is 6-foot-5 and built like a man who should hit the façade of the right-field upper deck twice a month, yet he has topped 20 home runs exactly once in his career.
He looks like a slugger, hits like a craftsman, and lives forever in the gray area between “reliable” and “we can do better.”
This is what fascinates the Phillies and frustrates them in equal measure. Bohm can hit. That is not in dispute. He sprays line drives, covers the zone, produces batting averages that never dip into the danger zones. He does not crater with runners in scoring position. He has grown from a defensive liability into a respectable third baseman who makes the routine plays and no longer looks like the game is speeding up on him. He is popular in the clubhouse and steady in a lineup full of personalities who gravitate toward noise.
But there is another side of the same story. Bohm is entering his final year before free agency, with a projected salary around $10 million. The Phillies have not rushed to extend him. They have not implied he is a long-term cornerstone. This isn’t a verdict on his ability as much as a recognition of their own evolving identity. They want more impact. They want a different shape to their lineup. And they want it soon.
Meanwhile, the market around them is anything but quiet. Alex Bregman is out there as a true free agent. Bo Bichette just played out his deal in Toronto and hit the market with a qualifying offer attached. And this isn’t just a two-name fantasy list, either. Other everyday infielders — Eugenio Suárez, Jorge Polanco, Luis Arráez — are all on the open market, each offering a different way to nudge a lineup forward. The Phillies aren’t shopping in the bargain aisle. They’re staring at names that would move the lineup needle the moment the ink dries on a contract.
And then there is Aidan Miller, the kid whose bat speed seems to solve problems in advance. He tore through the minors in 2025 and is widely viewed as a future middle-of-the-order bat. The organization may never say it out loud, but his presence changes the calculus. At some point, you either open a door for a player like that or explain why you didn’t.
So here we are again, staring at the Bohm Question. It lived through the winter of 2024–25, when rumors shadowed him from one side of the calendar to the other but never materialized into more than talk. It has survived the opinions of scouts, the advent of analytics, and the ebbs and flows of a player whose strengths have always been just strong enough to make the weaknesses feel magnified.
Jon Morosi said it plainly at the GM meetings in Las Vegas: the Phillies won’t move Bohm just to move him. They’ll move him if the path leads to a star. If there is a real chance to land someone like Bichette or Bregman — if the offense can take a step forward, not sideways — that is when the calculation changes.
The Phillies’ offseason will begin somewhere else, with decisions on Kyle Schwarber and J.T. Realmuto. But what happens after that could pivot entirely on this one player. If they decide to explore the big infield names, the first step would be clearing the lane. And the only way to clear it is by answering the same enigmatic question that keeps returning every year.
The Phillies like Alec Bohm. They respect what he brings. They understand what he can be. But they also know what they need, and what they might become, and what a different version of this lineup could look like.
So once again, the winter begins with a mystery.
The Phillies can keep him.
The Phillies can trade him.
Either direction makes sense.
Neither path is obvious.
And somewhere in that uncertainty lies the entire story — of a team caught between who it has been and who it wants to be, and of a third baseman who keeps finding himself at the very center of the offseason without ever asking to be there.
Alec Bohm is not the Phillies’ biggest problem.
He might be their biggest decision.
This is what fascinates the Phillies and frustrates them in equal measure. Bohm can hit. That is not in dispute. He sprays line drives, covers the zone, produces batting averages that never dip into the danger zones. He does not crater with runners in scoring position. He has grown from a defensive liability into a respectable third baseman who makes the routine plays and no longer looks like the game is speeding up on him. He is popular in the clubhouse and steady in a lineup full of personalities who gravitate toward noise.
But there is another side of the same story. Bohm is entering his final year before free agency, with a projected salary around $10 million. The Phillies have not rushed to extend him. They have not implied he is a long-term cornerstone. This isn’t a verdict on his ability as much as a recognition of their own evolving identity. They want more impact. They want a different shape to their lineup. And they want it soon.
Meanwhile, the market around them is anything but quiet. Alex Bregman is out there as a true free agent. Bo Bichette just played out his deal in Toronto and hit the market with a qualifying offer attached. And this isn’t just a two-name fantasy list, either. Other everyday infielders — Eugenio Suárez, Jorge Polanco, Luis Arráez — are all on the open market, each offering a different way to nudge a lineup forward. The Phillies aren’t shopping in the bargain aisle. They’re staring at names that would move the lineup needle the moment the ink dries on a contract.
And then there is Aidan Miller, the kid whose bat speed seems to solve problems in advance. He tore through the minors in 2025 and is widely viewed as a future middle-of-the-order bat. The organization may never say it out loud, but his presence changes the calculus. At some point, you either open a door for a player like that or explain why you didn’t.
So here we are again, staring at the Bohm Question. It lived through the winter of 2024–25, when rumors shadowed him from one side of the calendar to the other but never materialized into more than talk. It has survived the opinions of scouts, the advent of analytics, and the ebbs and flows of a player whose strengths have always been just strong enough to make the weaknesses feel magnified.
Jon Morosi said it plainly at the GM meetings in Las Vegas: the Phillies won’t move Bohm just to move him. They’ll move him if the path leads to a star. If there is a real chance to land someone like Bichette or Bregman — if the offense can take a step forward, not sideways — that is when the calculation changes.
The Phillies’ offseason will begin somewhere else, with decisions on Kyle Schwarber and J.T. Realmuto. But what happens after that could pivot entirely on this one player. If they decide to explore the big infield names, the first step would be clearing the lane. And the only way to clear it is by answering the same enigmatic question that keeps returning every year.
The Phillies like Alec Bohm. They respect what he brings. They understand what he can be. But they also know what they need, and what they might become, and what a different version of this lineup could look like.
So once again, the winter begins with a mystery.
The Phillies can keep him.
The Phillies can trade him.
Either direction makes sense.
Neither path is obvious.
And somewhere in that uncertainty lies the entire story — of a team caught between who it has been and who it wants to be, and of a third baseman who keeps finding himself at the very center of the offseason without ever asking to be there.
Alec Bohm is not the Phillies’ biggest problem.
He might be their biggest decision.
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