Alec Bohm Trade Watch Begins In Philadelphia

Highlights:

• Former GM Jim Bowden says Alec Bohm belongs on the winter trade board as Philadelphia weighs upgrades.
  
• The Philadelphia Phillies can run it back with one more year of Bohm or shop for a premium third baseman and flip Bohm for help elsewhere.
  
• If Philadelphia buys big, logical Bohm destinations include the Los Angeles Angels; if they don’t, a July market could pay more.
  

After their devastatingly early exit from the 2025 playoffs, the Philadelphia Phillies are at a fork in the road. Where does this team stand heading into 2026, especially with President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski wondering if Bryce Harper can play at an “elite level,” again?

Dombrowski has some tough decisions this winter. 

One of the easier ones is whether they keep Alec Bohm for one more year and spend elsewhere, or go shopping for a bigger third-base solution and use Bohm as currency.

In his column for The Athletic this week, former MLB GM Jim Bowden suggests Bohm is one of the big-name players who is likely to be traded this winter.

What Bohm is now

He’s reached his ceiling as a steady, slightly above-average regular with real strengths.

Bohm’s 2025 was a “steady bat, modest pop” season: roughly a .287/.331/.409 line with 11 HR, 59 RBI over ~500 PA, plus limited steals, per MLB and FanGraphs logs. 

Under the hood, Baseball Savant shows above-average contact quality—90.8 mph average exit velo, 46.4% hard-hit rate, 6.2% barrels—and a quality-of-contact profile that supports the batting-average floor even when the slug lags (wOBA .322, xwOBA .332). 

Big picture, that’s who he is now: reliable contact, playable power, and enough batted-ball thump to lengthen an order, with defense that’s serviceable when positioned well.

 Career-wise, he sits at .279/.328/.743 OPS with 70 HR and 753 hits, the résumé of a solid everyday regular rather than a star—useful on a contender, especially if the price and one-year control line up.

The case to keep him

Continuity has value, and so does a fit in the clubhouse. 

One more season of a known bat at a manageable arbitration number keeps the payroll flexible for pitching and depth. 

If Bohm is healthy for 150 games, you can pencil in a competent offense and live with the defense. 

And then they can revisit it in July before the trade deadline. if Philadelphia wants to push its chips later, a healthy, productive Bohm can bring back more at the deadline than he will in December.

The case for going bigger

If the goal is to change October outcomes, third base is the cleanest place to raise the ceiling. Alex Bregman is expected to test free agency again via opt-out.

 If Philadelphia makes that play, the domino is obvious: sign the upgrade, then flip Bohm for arms or up-the-middle help. That’s how you raise the top of the roster without draining all the oxygen from the rest of it.