The Phillies might have the ‘baddest infield in the world.’ Will it become the best in team history?

When the Phillies get back from a road trip and prepare to begin a series at Citizens Bank Park, Larry Bowa is usually there waiting for them.

“He’ll come in,” Bryce Harper said this week, “and we haven’t seen him in a week or so, and he’ll tell us we’re the baddest infield in the world.”

OK, don’t get it twisted. Bowa is 78, so to him, bad actually means good. And he’s an infield expert. As a player, he won two Gold Gloves and retired in 1985 with the highest fielding percentage among shortstops. As a coach, he worked with Alex Rodriguez, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Derek Jeter, Robinson Canó, Jeff Kent, and others.

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Since 2018, Bowa has been a Phillies senior adviser, a role that includes assisting infield coach Bobby Dickerson in spring training. This year, he has taken his fungo bat into the season, putting on a uniform and hitting grounders before most home games.

It means something, then, when Bowa looks over the Phillies’ regular infield — Harper at first base, Bryson Stott at second, Trea Turner at shortstop, Alec Bohm at third — and slathers it with praise.

“These guys work, man,” Bowa said. “They work hard. Bobby started in spring training with them and told them how important it is not to give away outs. We have two or three pitchers that are real big ground-ball pitchers. You’ve got to make the plays, and they’ve done that. They’ve done a great job with it.

“Not only that, but they’re all good hitters, which makes it even better.”

It’s fitting, isn’t it? In the two golden eras in their history, the Phillies had a terrific infield. Bowa and Mike Schmidt were the anchors from 1976 to 1981, with Manny Trillo and Pete Rose arriving at second base and first in 1979. From 2007 to 2011, Rollins, Utley, and Ryan Howard formed three-quarters of baseball’s best infield, with a revolving door at third base that included Pedro Feliz and Placido Polanco, among others.

The present-day Phillies are off to the hottest start in the franchise’s 142 seasons, taking a 37-14 mark into Memorial Day weekend. And while they have been led by dominant starting pitching, here were their four best position players based on Fangraphs’ wins above replacement:

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The Phillies sent three infielders to the All-Star Game in 1974, 1976, 1979, 1981, and 1982. They have never had four infielders selected. If Turner remains ahead of schedule and returns in early June, it isn’t crazy to think it could happen this season.

Regardless, it’s worth wondering if this infield, with all four players under contract through at least 2026, can surpass its predecessors as the Phillies’ best.

“I feel like we’ve got a long ways to go,” Harper said. “Those were really, really good infields from the past that did it for a long time. I just think if we can win games like they did, then we’ll be good.”

Fair enough. But with the 2024 Phillies rewriting so much history lately, let’s look at the making of a new star-studded infield and, with an assist from Bowa, compare it to ones that came before:

In the third inning Thursday, the Rangers’ Marcus Semien hit a grounder to the right side. Harper stepped to his right, realized he couldn’t reach the ball, but ranged too far to cover the base.

It was a reminder that he’s still a novice first baseman.

Last spring, after the Phillies lost Rhys Hoskins for the season to a torn ACL, Harper volunteered to learn to play first base — on the fly, while he recovered from Tommy John surgery. He didn’t start his first game until the middle of July but was such a natural that the Phillies made the position switch permanent.

Sure enough, through Thursday, Harper ranked second among all first basemen with four defensive runs saved.

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It’s reminiscent of Rose. Although the circumstances were different, he scarcely played first base until the Phillies signed him as a free agent in December 1978.

“I went to spring training for ‘79, and every day for the first 2½ weeks, [coach] Lee Elia took me to the complex and all we did was work on first base,” Rose said in 2019. “Short-hops, footwork; short-hops, footwork. What’s the sense in having Schmidt and Bowa, Gold Glove infielders, if you have a guy at first base who can’t catch the [darn] ball? I really thought I was a good first baseman, and it’s because I worked hard, because I wanted to help the team when I had a glove on my hand.”

Harper believes hard work is the hallmark of the Phillies’ infield under Dickerson, a boisterous coach who will hit grounders for as long as his players want to field them.

“A lot of us really liked to be coached, as well,” Harper said. “We all really like to get better, and having Dicky on our tail all the time, working out there and pushing us in that way, it just helps us that much more.”

As a rookie, Stott played shortstop down the stretch and through the postseason for the pennant-winning 2022 Phillies. But with the team poised to pursue Turner in free agency, manager Rob Thomson asked if Stott was comfortable moving to second base.

“I’ll play anywhere,” he said, “as long as I’m playing.”

Stott was a Gold Glove finalist at second last season and has been so good again this year that Thomson resisted the urge to move him back to shortstop after Turner got injured. (It has helped, too, that shortstop understudy Edmundo Sosa was 14-for-41 in 14 starts entering the weekend.)

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“Stott’s just a good baseball player,” Bowa said. “You can put him anywhere.”

Bowa played with several second basemen, notably Dave Cash and Ted Sizemore, before the Phillies traded for Trillo prior to the 1979 season. He said Trillo “took [the infield] to another level” in a way that might be similar to the addition of Turner before last season.

Utley is the gold standard for Phillies second basemen and a high bar for Stott, who improved from 2022 to 2023 and is having an even better season so far this year.

“I think it’s just a matter of time,” Utley said last week. “I would imagine now that he’s been up here for three years and he’s starting to have some real success, it’s becoming a little easier for him. When you’re young, you want to think that every strike you need to swing at, which is not necessarily the case. It’s a good sign that he feels comfortable.”

Last year, after signing an 11-year, $300 million contract, Turner ranked 30th among 35 qualified shortstops in outs above average (minus-5) and second-to-last in defensive runs saved (minus-12). But you didn’t need metrics to see that he had the worst defensive season of his career.

Bowa noticed a difference from the instant Turner stepped on the half-field in spring training.

“He wanted to get better,” Bowa said. “He said, ‘I don’t like where they rank me at shortstop.’ I like that. It’s a challenge. He’s an exceptional player, man.”

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Bowa graded among the best defensive shortstops in the ’70s. Rollins, a four-time Gold Glove winner, held that distinction in the 2000s and ranks fourth all-time among shortstops in fielding percentage. As a defender, Turner isn’t in their class.

But Turner, a more dynamic offensive player than his predecessors, is out to prove he can stay at shortstop for the majority of his contract, or at least for several more years until one of the Phillies’ young prospects — 20-year-old Bryan Rincon at high-A Jersey Shore, 19-year-old Aidan Miller at low-A Clearwater, or 18-year-old Starlyn Caba in rookie ball — is closer to the majors.

“Bobby made him pay a little more attention to detail with his footwork, catching the ball the right way, not taking as many steps,” Bowa said. “Bobby puts it out there, but for them to accept it, that’s another step. And they’ve all bought in. That’s important. Trea could easily say, ‘Who cares? I hit .330 every year.’ He’s done a great job.”

A few weeks before the 2018 draft, the Phillies sent Bowa and Charlie Manuel to watch Bohm play for Wichita State. Everyone in the country knew Bohm could hit. The question: Could he handle third base?

“I’ll be honest,” Bowa said, “I went, ‘I don’t know, man.’ Because I didn’t.”

For one thing, Bohm is 6-foot-5. Troy Glaus and Kris Bryant were the only players at that height to start at least 100 games at third base. And after Bohm famously committed three errors in an April 2022 game, it didn’t appear that he would join the club.

But Bohm’s level of improvement over the last two seasons has been among the most stark developments for the Phillies. The metrics indicate he’s a league-average defender. He might be even a smidge better.

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“Bohmer’s doing an incredible job over there at third base,” Harper said. “He really is. He’s getting better each year.”

He won’t unseat Schmidt as the greatest third baseman of all time. Harper is this Phillies era’s likely Hall of Fame counterweight to Schmidt. But Bowa does watch Bohm and see the early career trajectory of another Phillies great.

“When [Utley] first came up, Ut worked, man. He made himself a good player, and Bohm’s done that,” Bowa said. “He’s come a long way.”

Far enough to help turn this iteration of the Phillies’ infield into the franchise’s best? Check back. But Bowa never minded the comparisons that were sparked by Howard, Utley, and Rollins. He’s willing to open the debate to a new generation.

“I love it,” he said. “I worked with a lot of those guys [in the 2000s], just like being in spring training with these guys. These guys are good, man. It’s fun to see all the things that are happening right now.”

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