Which young players will be part of the Phillies’ long-term plan?

As the Phillies self-diagnose all the reasons why they fell short, they must look at the young players they thought were ready to join their star-studded core and wonder about their futures.

From left, the Phillies' Alec Bohm, Brandon Marsh, Bryson Stott, and Ranger SuarezRead moreYong Kim/Staff Photographer, Monica Herndon

by Scott Lauber

Published Oct. 10, 2024, 2:26 p.m. ET

Alec Bohm stood in front of his locker Wednesday night, the haze of a divisional-round knockout still thick within the Phillies’ clubhouse, and tried to make sense of it all.

“I definitely wasn’t my best self,” he said. “It doesn’t feel good.”

It hasn’t felt good for a while now. It wasn’t just that Bohm missed two weeks last month with a left hand injury so painful that it felt like a hammer hit it whenever he swung a bat. Or that steady-Eddie manager Rob Thomson benched him Sunday for Game 2 against the Mets.

No, Bohm’s vanishing act began seven weeks ago. A run-producing, All-Star doubles machine out of the cleanup spot — and better protection for Bryce Harper than a home-security system — for three-quarters of the season, he finished in a 14-for-90 swoon with one double and a .414 OPS, including his 1-for-13 postseason.

Worse, Bohm led the Phillies in tantrums, seeming to lose focus with each at-bat. In Game 3, he got thrown out at second trying to stretch a single, then hacked at the first pitch in his next two at-bats. When he hit a ball that narrowly went foul in Game 4, he berated first base umpire Carlos Torres, prompting coach Paco Figueroa to step between them. Bohm struggled defensively in Games 3 and 4, too.

“It’s a hard game,” Bohm said. “You’re not always going to be getting hits and doing all those things. There’s other ways to help the team win. It just didn’t happen.”

Not for Bryson Stott, either. Nor Brandon Marsh. And although Ranger Suárez walked a high wire in Game 4, leaving the bases loaded in the first and second innings and exiting in the fifth with a 1-0 lead in tow, let’s not pretend that he pitched well — against the Mets or anyone else after looking like the best lefty in the National League through June.

So, as the Phillies self-diagnose all the reasons why they fell so short of their World Series-or-bust mission and ponder changes, they must look at the stable of young players that they thought were ready to join their star-studded core and wonder about their futures.

Bohm, for one, insisted he has no doubts.

“No,” he said. “I know where I’ll be next year.”

OK, but the Phillies will surely at least discuss whether Bohm is part of the long-term plan. He is 28 and coming off an All-Star first half, with two more years of club control at reasonable money. (His $4 million salary will likely double in arbitration.)

Maybe his struggles down the stretch were easily explained. Maybe it all stemmed from his injured hand.

“Is it the hand? I don’t know,” Bohm said. “I don’t feel like it is. I definitely didn’t get back to where I was before that swinging the bat. But there’s no excuse for me. I don’t think that was really the reason why. I don’t know what the reason was. I wish I knew. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have struggled the way I did.”

Marsh and Stott regressed at the plate to the point where they became platoon players for Thomson. Both will be eligible for arbitration for the first time. Both play superb defense, Marsh in left field and Stott at second base.

Neither was in the lineup for Game 3 against Mets lefty Sean Manaea. When Thomson turned back to them for Game 4 against lefty Jose Quintana, he pledged that he has “a lot of confidence in them” and noted that Stott has hit lefties in the past. There’s reason to believe the 27-year-old will again.

Marsh has not yet solved lefties in nearly 400 plate appearances in the majors. Maybe he never will. It wouldn’t be the end of the world. Marsh could be productive in the strong side of a left-field platoon, even if the Phillies expected more when they traded for him at the deadline in 2022 for young catcher Logan O’Hoppe.

But Marsh’s strikeout rate ticked back up to 32.4% this season. His career mark in nearly 1,500 plate appearances is 32.8%.

Given how much swing-and-miss exists in other spots of the Phillies’ lineup — and their .710 OPS out of left field, tied for 15th in the majors — it might make sense to trade Marsh for an outfielder whose offensive profile better fits the team’s overall needs.

Offense will be the focus of the offseason, especially after the Phillies batted .186 (24-for-129) in the four games against the Mets and scored a total of 12 runs. But it’s worth remembering that they asked about White Sox lefty Garrett Crochet at the trade deadline, an indication that they aren’t satisfied with the starting rotation.

Suárez’s troubling lack of durability contributed to that feeling, too.

Like Bohm, Suárez appeared poised for a star turn in the first half of the season. He had a full spring training, without delays by visa issues or interruptions by injuries, and won his first nine decisions. He had a 1.32 ERA through six starts, a 1.75 mark by Memorial Day, and a 1.83 ERA after a late June duel with Tigers ace lefty Tarik Skubal that had a chance of being an All-Star Game preview.

But Suárez was slowed by a sore back in early July. He skipped the All-Star Game to get additional rest and went on the injured list a few weeks later. The Phillies slow-played his return to assure he’d be fresh down the stretch. Instead, he finished with a 5.74 ERA in his last seven starts.

Suárez suggested that the back issue caused him to use his legs and hips less in his delivery. Whatever the case, his first-half success gave the Phillies a third top-of-the-rotation starter alongside Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola. His second-half disappearing act left the middle of the rotation vulnerable.

“Injuries might have gotten the best of me mentally at one point in the season,” Suárez said through a team interpreter. “It’s just, keep working, getting better, getting in better shape, and just physically being better so these kind of things don’t happen again.”

And as the haze lifts from a playoff ousting that came 10 wins short of the only goal that they said ever mattered to them, the Phillies must figure out how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.