I’ve never been a pitcher— unless we count a few Be a Pro save files in various editions of MLB: The Show —, but I have to imagine it’s something of a relief to throw a fastball. You don’t have to torture your arm with some tendon-twisting, movement-generating motion, you don’t have to worry that your offspeed pitch will get sniffed out and given one-way airfare out of the park. You just get to rear back, and throw it as hard as you can. Just like you did when you were first messing around in the backyard.
Pitchers who face the Phillies don’t always have the opportunity to do so. They first have to work their way past Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper, whose faces appear annually on the “WARNING: Do Not Throw These Men a Fastball” list thoughtfully distributed to pitchers league-wide. After that, though, they probably want to toss a bunch of heaters to whoever’s up next. Alec Bohm? He’s got a pretty slow bat. Yes, why not toss him some fastballs? It must be tempting to do so, because he’s seeing a greater percentage of fastballs than any Phillie besides Justin Crawford.
Opposing pitchers reading this, please read the following carefully: do not throw fastballs to Alec Bohm. I know he ranks in the 28th percentile for bat speed. I know he was really bad against fastballs in the first month of the season. He is not bad at hitting them anymore. By telling you this, I have done my due diligence. If you ignore me, I can’t be held responsible.
I really hope they didn’t read that, though. Because I would like pitchers to keep throwing fastballs to Bohm. And so would he, I’d imagine. (All stats prior to Tuesday’s game). His tremendous struggles at the plate in March and April were a result of his dismal performance against fastballs (wOBA of .177) and breaking balls (.191). And so it came as no surprise when he kept seeing a steady diet of the same in May. But as the weather heated up, so did his bat. His performance against both fastballs and breaking balls improved in the fifth month, but much more so for the former: his wOBA against the fastball leapt up to .347, nearly double what it had been. His wOBA against the moving stuff went up from .191 to .260; notable, but comparatively modest. In June, his wOBA against breaking balls dropped, but his performance against fastballs just kept rising: wOBA of .423. And yet, he’s seeing a slightly greater percentage of fastballs in June than he did in May, which in turn was a slightly greater percentage than he saw in April. Hence the warning above.
But how’s Bohm doing it? His BABIP against fastballs just keeps rising: it was a dismal .113 across March and April, more than doubled in May, and now sits at a whopping .395 in June. That only gets us part of the way there, though. What’s behind the change in BABIP? Some luck, surely, both good and bad: he underperformed his expected stats against the fastball in April, and he’s overperforming against them in June. But there’s something real there, too. He’s changed the way he’s attacking against fastballs.
Firstly, he’s swinging at them more. He started out the season with a tremendous reluctance to swing at fastballs: 43% swing rate, the second-lowest in a month across his career. But that changed fast: in May his swing rate against fastballs was 48.9%, and it June it was 52%. And his contact rate has followed the same pattern, having gone from 84.7% in March/April to 92.2% this month. Swinging more isn’t necessarily good, but if you’re pairing it with hitting more of the pitches you swing at, well, that alleviates some of the concerns. And it should be noted that this is fastball-specific—he hasn’t increased his swing rate for breaking pitches to an appreciable degree over the course of the season, and he’s swinging less at offspeed pitches.
He’s not swinging at just any fastballs, though. He’s more selective than that. Here’s his swing rates on fastballs, by month, and by Attack Zone.
He’s swinging more at fastballs over the heart of the plate, where he can do the most damage.
And the nature of the hits he’s getting on those fastballs have changed. In March/April, 15.7% of his hits on fastballs were line drives, and 51% are ground balls. In May, the split was 25.5%/41.8%, and in June it’s 32.5%/42.5%. That’ll get you better results.
But opposing pitchers just haven’t taken notice. As mentioned above, they’re throwing him more fastballs now than at the beginning of the season. Maybe they’re not believers in what he’s doing, thinking that he’ll regress to the mean sooner rather than later. Maybe they’re just really itching to throw some fastballs after having to avoid tossing them to Schwarber and Harper. If Bohm keeps this up, eventually pitchers are going to stop throwing him so many heaters. But no rush, enemy hurlers— take your time.
