2018 Phillies Draft Preview: Alec Bohm, 3B

Alec Bohm is a 21 year old, 6’5”, 225 lbs right handed hitting Third Baseman for Wichita State University. He wasn’t drafted out of high school, in part because he was still considered raw and partly because he had a strong college commitment and would be a signing risk. Bohm has been the starter at the hot corner for the Shockers from day 1 of his college career. Freshman year he was pretty swing happy and while he didn’t strike out of often because of good contact skills and bat control, he walked at Nick Williams/Jorge Alfaro levels, heck maybe even Willians Astudillo levels. The he went to summer league and chilled way the hell out with the swinging and significantly improving his approach it carried over to his Sophmore year and has improved each subsequent season. This year he currently has 31 BB to only 16 K’s.

Defensively there are some questions about Bohm. His arm is good enough for Third, but just barely. His footwork looks better this year, but he still doesn’t look terribly natural at Third and his range is not particularly great. The scouting consensus I’ve read seems to be that he can probably stay at Third and his bat can make up for average to below average Defense.

Bohm is also not particularly fast. He’s a 45 grade runner with some build up speed. That said, he’s reminiscent for me of the Phillies’ own Dylan Cozens in that, while not fast, he’s a smart baserunner. Aggressive, but not unaware of his limitations, he’ll take the basewhen the throw passes a cut off man or goes to the baserunner ahead of him, but if he takes a wide turn at First and sees it might be close at Second he’s been good at backing off in the film I’ve seen.

Bohm’s best tool is really his Power. Most reports I’ve seen list it at Grade 70 for Raw and game power more in the 55-60 range. I’ll pop some videos in below here, but I think a pro team is going to try to make a few adjustments on his swing. First, I think they’d try to close his stance as the Phillies have worked on with Franco this year. Second I think they’d try to get more leg kick to get to his power more consistently (though he is very disciplined about shortening his swing and eliminating his kick entirely in 2 strike counts). Another item to work on is that in a lot of video, reports and the 2 games I’ve watched, he is a really pull happy hitter. Closing the stance a little should help with that and the kick may keep him back so he can drive opposite field more, but he runs the risk of being fairly susceptible to shifts to the Third Base side.

First video I’ll share is for 2080 Baseball from Bohm’s monster series against 11th ranked ECU. The first half of the video is batting cage stuff, which I don’t like to use unless it’s all that’s available (often for High Schoolers it is), fortunately after the 1 minute mark it goes to game action. First thing I’ll note is that his stance is more closed this series than in others. It’s also notable to me that he keeps his head quite level during his kick step, despite the long stride nature of it. His bat is quiet with a small load and his swing isn’t as long as it was 2 years ago. What I don’t like is he seems kind of stiff in his mechanics as both a hitter and fielder. I wouldn’t be surprised is he’s at First in 5 years and I also wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he’s a player who doesn’t age well into his 30’s. Both of those would be pretty silly things to affect his draft stock, just more general notes for down the road.

This next video is from Fangraphs and in a theme on youtube in which every damned video of Bohm is from the same series, this is also against ECU. There’s nothing else to really say on the swing here, but this video gives a nice 3 or 4 clips of pregame defensive warmups so you can see the somewhat choppy footwork and throwing mechanics.

I’m a Bohm fan, but in a draft whose theme is red flags, Bohm is not immune to them. Playing in the AAC, the level of competition is lesser than the ACC guys. Bohm has performed well against ranked teams and played very well in the Cape Cod League last year (.351/.399/.513) against high level competition with a wood bat, so I’m not too worried about that (at least no more than any other College player). I worry about his ability to stay at Third in the pros the most. The bat should play fine at First and Bohm will likely need a few seasons of seasoning in the Minors, so he could slide in there after Santana’s contract wraps up. Per the latest Fangraphs mock draft the Phillies are apparently strongly targeting College hitters and Bohm has gotten a lot of attention (along with Madrigal and Swaggerty). Bohm is my favorite of the rumored Phillies targets and if he’s the pick, I’ll be pretty happy with the result.