Remember all the hype and buzz around Philadelphia Phillies prospect Otto Kemp? It feels like an eternity ago that fans were calling for the team to replace the ice-cold Alec Bohm at third base with the red-hot Kemp, who had been dominating Triple-A pitching.
That all feels so far away now. Kemp, MLB Pipeline’s No. 24 Phillies prospect, is still raking for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, but his path to the majors has been blocked by Bohm’s resurgence.
It’s becoming difficult to call it a hot streak. Bohm has been hitting since April 14. At this point, it’s just a great turnaround and a much better-looking rest-of-season outlook (subscription required) for the sixth-year player, per The Athletic’s Matt Gelb. He slashed .150/.164/.167 over the first two weeks of the season. Since then, the 28-year-old is hitting .321/.364/.481 with four home runs and 17 RBIs in 35 games before Sunday’s series finale against the Athletics.
Alec Bohm is back so Phillies prospect Otto Kemp will have to wait
Recently, Bohm has taken it up a notch. During his most recent streak, he’s still hitting for average, batting .310, but has started hitting for power again. In his last 11 games before Sunday, he was slugging .595 with three homers, three doubles and eight RBIs. He’s been doing this while hitting in the bottom half of the lineup.
It’s no coincidence that the power numbers are up. Before this recent stretch, Bohm hadn’t been pulling the ball as much as he usually does. He had a career-high 36.1 percent pull rate last season, but was only pulling 26.6 percent of his batted balls up to the first game of the doubleheader on May 14. Since then, he’s getting the barrel out and pulling balls at a 38.9 percent clip.
His home run on Saturday night against the Athletics was his first pulled homer of the season.
It’s not even like Kemp has cooled down since his hot start to the season, but Bohm is playing so well that any thought of a call-up is out the window. Kemp is slashing .333/.453/.513 with three home runs and 15 RBIs in 20 games in May. On the season, he still has a ridiculous .323/.430/.613 slash line with an International League-leading 12 home runs and 42 RBIs in 48 games.
With the Phillies rolling to 21 wins in their last 27 games since that late-April five-game losing skid, there’s even less of a chance of a shake-up by the front office.
They might have one of the most settled rosters in the majors, with minimal room for unproven talent to squeeze into game action. With a World Series being the Phillies’ ultimate and very realistic goal, even scorching players like Kemp will have to bid their time in the minors until a window, likely caused by an injury, opens up.
