May 02, 2024
Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA Today Sports
The season is young, but Alec Bohm is flirting with leading the National League in hitting.
The Phillies are sitting pretty at 21-11 rolling into a four-game set at home with the Giants beginning Friday night. Before then, here are five Phillies thoughts that are currently on my mind...
No Phillie has led the National League in hitting since Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn batted .355 in 1958. The Phillies have had their share of home run kings and MVPs like Mike Schmidt and Ryan Howard, but a batting champion? This is unfamiliar territory for generations of Phillies fans.
Alec Bohm is currently hitting .362. That's the second-best mark in the NL behind Los Angeles' Mookie Betts at .377. Trea Turner isn't too far behind on the leaderboards in his own right, currently seventh in the NL in hitting with a .336 average.
Now, obviously, it is only May 2. An NL hitter hasn't won the batting crown with an average over .360 since Chipper Jones in 2008. These numbers will inevitably go down, as will Bohm's otherworldly numbers with runners in scoring position, but that doesn't mean they can't still stack up against the best of the best in the sport.
In what was assumed to be a year fighting for a Wild Card berth, the Phillies are in an early battle for the NL East lead. Could this summer bring both a divisional race and a batting champion race to South Philly? Get the fireworks ready.
Speaking of spring scoreboard watching, the Phils set a franchise record with 19 wins in the month of April. The last two regular seasons were defined by slow starts that had the team falling ass-backwards into the playoffs before deep October runs. That's not going to be the case in 2024. The Phils' April schedule is softer than it has been in the past, but this is what good teams do. They stack wins against inferior competition. They don't make things harder on themselves than they need to be.
The Phils sit just a half-game behind Atlanta in the NL East.
After a disastrous postseason at the plate and major struggles to begin the year, Johan Rojas' bat is finally coming along. Rojas needs to simply be decent at the plate to make him a worthy everyday player given how elite his defense is in centerfield. Is he now truly turning the corner?
In his last 18 games, Rojas is hitting .302 with a .796 OPS. That's not setting the world on fire, but, again, it would be more than enough for him at the plate coupled with his defensive prowess. No hit was bigger during that stretch than his first home run of the season on Tuesday night, as Rojas' two-run shot gave the Phils a 7-5 win over the Angels:
The kid comes in CLUTCH#RingTheBell pic.twitter.com/HHXWFGRZpv
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) May 1, 2024
That swing looked damn good!
Zack Wheeler had an "off" game on Wednesday afternoon, pitching "just" five innings of one-run baseball with six strikeouts as the bullpen shut things down for the final four frames. Wheeler's pitch count got him into trouble early, as he threw 106 pitches overall. Still, if that's what constitutes Wheeler not being at his best, this rotation is going to continue to dominate.
Wheeler mentioned after the game that the extra rest he had before this start may have been the reason his stuff wasn't as sharp, but, hey, it's only May.
Despite picking up the win on Wednesday, Zack Wheeler still frustrated with his recent outings. pic.twitter.com/zipBbC86lj
— NBC Sports Philadelphia (@NBCSPhilly) May 2, 2024
Through seven starts, Wheeler still has career-best marks in ERA, strikeouts per nine innings, WHIP and hits per nine innings.
Trea Turner's up-and-down 2023 season is well documented. He's been a full-out star in 2024 though. He's hitting .336 with a .386 on-base percentage and .455 slugging percentage. In his All-Star season with the Dodgers in 2022 before signing a massive free agent contract with the Phils, he slashed .298/.343/.466 while picking up a Silver Slugger Award and finishing 11th in NL MVP voting.
This is exactly the player the Phillies envisioned they were getting when they handed him a contract worth $300 million.
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