PHILADELPHIA − One year ago Tuesday, Alec Bohm was saying how much “I (expletive) hate this place,” and Bryson Stott was a week away from getting sent down to the minor leagues.
Now it’s hard to see where the Phillies would be without them, especially with Bryce Harper working his way back from offseason elbow surgery.
We learned Tuesday that Harper has progressed to the next phase of his recovery, “modified sliding,” as Phillies manager Rob Thomson put it.
You might be wondering what “modified sliding” means. Well, here was Thomson’s explanation: “Start on (your) knees, and (Harper) just stretches out and pushes off his knees, just to get that feeling. He doesn’t go into a base or anything. Just on the grass.”
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The next step won’t happen until Harper sees Dr. Neal ElAttrache in Los Angeles, and ElAttrache clears him to do full sliding. At that point, Harper can start working towards a return.
Thomson doesn’t know when that appointment will occur, an indication that it’s not imminent.
Until then, the Phillies have to find a way to get by without him.
So even on a night when the Marlins’ Luis Arraez hit for the first cycle in team history, when Aaron Nola for the third straight time didn’t pitch like a top-of-the-rotation pitcher, there were Stott and Bohm doing everything they could to keep the Phillies close.
It just wasn’t enough in the Phillies’ 8-4 loss to the Marlins on Tuesday night.
Some of that was because of Stott’s base-running blunder after his 2-run single in the sixth cut the Phillies’ deficit to 4-3. Stott took a wide turn around first base and former Phillie Jean Segura threw him out with the potential tying run on third base.
The Marlins then added a run in the seventh and three more on the eighth to put the Phillies (4-7) away, much to the chagrin of the sold-out crowd of 43,444 that purchased more than 55,000 hot dogs (and threw some of them in frustration from the upper deck).
Stott knows that feeling. The crowd was euphoric when he singled in the two runs, then deflated when he was thrown out.
“Aggressive, but not stupid,” Stott said about cleaning up the base-running mistakes. “I think there’s a fine line in between that and a couple things that happened that aren’t very smart.”
But really, there’s not much more that can be asked of either him or Bohm.
Stott has gotten a hit in each of the Phillies’ 11 games this season. He’s hitting .422 so far. Stott was hitting .200 at this point last season. A week later, he was back in the minor leagues for a few weeks. He finished with 10 homers and 49 RBIs and hit .234.
Bohm appeared to be heading to the minors, too, after the worst game of his major league career one year ago. Bohm made three errors at third base in a game against the Mets. So when he made a routine play later in the game, the fans serenaded him with sarcastic cheers.
Bohm was then caught on camera saying, “I (expletive) hate this place.”
But Bohm answered every question after the game, and the next night, when he was sent up as a pinch-hitter, he received a standing ovation. And then he kept getting better, and he started hitting, and well, look at him now.
Bohm had 6 RBIs, including a three-run homer, in the Phillies 15-3 win over the Marlins on Monday night. Even after a 1-for-4 night on Tuesday, Bohm is hitting .341 with team highs in home runs (3) and RBIs (11).
Thomson was the Phillies’ bench coach at this point last year when Bohm went through his worst night. He saw how Bohm learned from that experience and not only made himself into a better fielder, but also a better hitter.
After all, a night like that could have completely sapped his confidence.
“Just the support of his teammates and the coaches around him, and the fans,” Thomson said. “I think it just calmed him down.”
Both Bohm and Stott are so much farther ahead of where they were last year.
“I think there’s more power there because he’s learned how to pull the ball,” Thomson said about Bohm. “How to get in front of the pitches in certain counts. Again, we don’t want him to get away from being the good hitter that he is, which is being able to use the field. Because that’s really his strength.”
Nola, meanwhile, couldn’t deliver on the mound. He had given up a run through the first five innings on Joe Berti’s home run in the third. But in the sixth, he gave up a one-out triple to Arraez followed by a double to Jorge Soler.
Nola then got the second out. At that point, Thomson said he felt like Nola could finish the inning. But Nola then gave up a run-scoring single to Yuli Gurriel, folloed by back-to-back singles to Jean Segura and Nick Fortes.
The Phillies were in a 4-0 hole as Nola left to a chorus of boos. He’s 0-2 this season with a 7.04 ERA through three starts.
“Frustrating,” Nola said. “I didn’t make the pitches when I needed to with two strikes. I feel like I was one pitch away. I kept missing a little bit, they kept getting a couple of hits, and it spiraled … Just a bad inning.”
But then Kyle Schwarber started the sixth with a homer, and eventually Stott, batting eighth one night after batting leadoff, came through with his two-run single. Stott, however, got greedy, and that was pretty much it for the Phillies.
Thomson already said that Stott will be back at leadoff Wednesday, and perhaps much more often after that. And Harper will no doubt continue hitting and doing his “modified sliding.” In the meantime, the lessons continue for Bohm and Stott.
“Any time you make an out on the bases, it’s usually not good,” Stott said.
Contact Martin Frank at mfrank@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter @Mfranknfl.
