The former No. 3 overall pick would be remembered as a good player who never quite became the player Philadelphia once imagined. An All-Star starter in 2024. Consecutive 97-RBI seasons. Plenty of production, but never enough power or consistency to completely satisfy expectations.
And, increasingly, a player the Phillies appeared prepared to move on from.
They tried to trade Bohm after the 2024 season. They explored it again last winter, when his name surfaced as Philadelphia investigated ways to remake its infield. Now he is months from free agency, with no long-term extension and little indication that one is coming.
Except Bohm has suddenly complicated the ending.
He is hitting again. And right now, he is hitting everything.
Since the All-Star break, Bohm is batting .324 with a .373 on-base percentage, .472 slugging percentage and .845 OPS, collecting 35 hits, seven doubles, three homers and 22 RBIs in 29 games.
Over the past two weeks, the numbers have become even louder: .386 with 17 hits, nine RBIs and eight runs in 13 games. Over his last five entering Tuesday, Bohm was hitting .524 with 11 hits, six RBIs and six runs scored.
This isn't one hot night.
It's a resurgence.
And considering where Bohm was three months ago, it borders on astonishing.
On May 7, Bohm was hitting .159 with one homer, 15 RBIs and a .433 OPS, the second-lowest OPS among qualified major-league hitters. Don Mattingly removed him from the lineup for what he called a reset. The Phillies encouraged Bohm to stop hitting, stop taking ground balls and simply get away from the grind for a day.
Mattingly remained convinced.
“You guys are going to forget what happened in May when he's hitting down the stretch and driving in runs,” he said then.
That quote looks different now.
Saturday in Minnesota, Bohm went 5-for-5 with three doubles, producing the first five-hit game of his career in a 9-1 Phillies win. A day later, with Philadelphia trailing 5-1, he crushed a three-run homer and later delivered the game-tying hit in the eighth inning of a 7-5 comeback victory. Monday against Miami, he added another RBI single.
More important than the results may be how Bohm is getting them.
“I think it's who he is,” Mattingly said Saturday. “He's got a great swing. The biggest change … is really just staying a little lower.” Mattingly pointed specifically to Bohm driving the ball into the gaps rather than trying to manufacture power.
That matters because the Phillies have spent years waiting for Bohm's 6-foot-5 frame to translate into prototypical corner-infielder power.
Maybe that was never the best version of him.
Maybe this is.
Bohm has always been at his best when the swing looks uncomplicated — line drives, doubles, hard contact through the middle of the field. He acknowledged as much after the Phillies recently emphasized a more disciplined offensive plan.
“If we're going to go down, let's go down with a plan,” Bohm said after the five-hit game, explaining that the Phillies had been swinging themselves out of too many at-bats.
The irony is that Bohm may finally be becoming exactly what the Phillies needed at the moment they appear least likely to commit to him.
Philadelphia has already rearranged its infield, moving Bohm to first base after acquiring Luis Arraez and shifting Bryson Stott to third. Top prospect Aidan Miller still looms as part of the organization's long-term infield picture. Bohm, who turned 30 this month, reaches free agency after the season.
So perhaps the next six weeks aren't really an audition for Philadelphia anymore.
They may be an audition for everybody else.
The ugly first two months still count. Bohm enters Tuesday hitting .242 with 14 homers and 69 RBIs overall. A torrid finish cannot completely erase a season that once looked lost.
But free agency isn't about what a player was worth in May.
It's about what clubs believe he will be worth next year.
And suddenly, Bohm is reminding everybody why the Phillies once believed they had found a foundational piece of their lineup.
It still may be too little, too late to keep him in Philadelphia beyond 2026.
But if this is the final chapter of Alec Bohm's Phillies career, he is doing something nobody expected a few months ago.
He is writing himself a much more expensive ending.
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