Shaking a slump: How Garrett Stubbs' vibe could help Alec Bohm ‘reset' originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
0-for-31. That was the hitless stretch buried inside Brandon Marsh’s poor start to last season.
He landed on the injured list in late April with a strained hamstring. It was supposed to be his year as the Phillies’ everyday center fielder.
Marsh went to Lehigh Valley to rehab and try to find himself again. Garrett Stubbs was there. And what followed was less about mechanics than most people would assume.
“Nothing that he doesn’t already know — which is that he’s a superstar player,” Stubbs said. “When you go through those lulls, it’s hard to remember that. You get on hot streaks and sometimes you feel like you’re never going to get out. And then when you go through the lows, the same thing happens in the opposite direction.”
Marsh will tell you the same thing. The swing was not the problem.
“Physically, I didn’t really change much,” Marsh said. “I liked where my swing was. I was swinging at bad pitches. It was more in my head than physically. Stubby helped me out tremendously, just with the mental side going into the game and approaching your day.”
Marsh finished his rehab assignment with consecutive multi-hit games and returned to the Phillies on May 3. Since then, he owns the highest batting average among National League hitters at .311, trailing only Tampa Bay’s Yandy Díaz for the best mark in baseball.
Stubbs watched it happen up close. He knows what it takes to turn that kind of stretch around, and he has made it part of his role to help teammates through it.
“Coming down to Triple-A, letting the shoulders down, relaxing and just remembering how good of a player he is, regardless of what result was currently happening — that was a huge part of it,” Stubbs said. “It’s not always a mechanical thing. Sometimes it is, but there’s a big mental side to the game.”
Now, Alec Bohm is the one trying to find his way through.
The Phillies gave Bohm a pair of “reset” days on Thursday and Friday. He enters Saturday hitting .159 through his first 126 at-bats — the second-lowest average by a Phillie through the club’s first 38 games since 1901, with a minimum of 120 plate appearances. His .433 OPS is the lowest by a Phillie through that same stretch.
The circumstances make it harder. Bohm is in his final arbitration season before free agency, and he is carrying off-field noise after filing a lawsuit against his parents, alleging financial mismanagement. The Phillies need the hitter they have seen before, though.
There is reason to believe he is still there. Last season, through his first 94 plate appearances, Bohm slashed .198/.223/.264 with no home runs. The rest of the way, he hit .308 with an .801 OPS and 11 home runs. His teammates have not forgotten that.
“He’s one of the best hitters ever to play the game. He knows he is. We all know he is,” Marsh said. “He’s going to come out of it and be better from it. It’s all going to be water under the bridge. He’s going to be fine.”
Stubbs knows the daily grind of a stretch like this from the inside. The attention makes it harder.
“You walk into this locker room and you see media members,” Stubbs said. “They look at you. They know what story’s going on. You’re not playing well. They know you’re not playing well. It’s just a snowball effect of pressure that consistently happens.”
The ways a clubhouse can help are not always formal. Stubbs, who goes by the “Chief Vibes Officer,” knows that better than most.
“It’s the moments in the locker room or on the bench — [Bohm and I] talk all the time,” Stubbs said. “It’s not always related to something serious. Sometimes it’s about going to play golf on the next off day. Blowing off some steam and hanging out with the boys, having a few beers and forgetting about whatever went on that day.
Through 162 games, you’ve got to have times like that where you take a deep breath and forget about the day-to-day.”
Interim manager Don Mattingly’s decision to give Bohm two days off came from the same place — not as a warning, but as a recognition that sometimes the hardest-working players need permission to step back.
“He’s been working so hard, hitting extra all the time,” Mattingly said Thursday. “I encouraged him to take a reset day from the standpoint of — grind, grind, grind, take a step back. And then we get back after it.”
The Phillies are not simply waiting for things to turn. Mattingly said Kevin Long, the hitting group, the front office and others have been working through video and biomechanics, comparing the current Bohm to the version of him that hits the ball to all fields and drives in runs.
“Nobody’s just looking away, saying, ‘He’s going to hit,'” Mattingly said. “You’re trying to figure out solutions. Most of the time, a guy catches a feel, gets a couple of knocks, and then he’s off to the races. He’s going to hit, and I’ll believe that till the day I’m not on this earth.”
Stubbs, who considers Bohm a close friend, was careful not to speak for him directly. But everything he said about what a struggling player needs applies to what is happening right now.
“Knowing that the other guys in the locker room understand how good of a player you are — that is, to me, the most important thing,” Stubbs said. “Everyone on the outside doesn’t always realize how difficult it is to play this game. They also don’t always realize that we’re human beings, and we have family matters, whether they’re public or not, that happen daily, weekly, monthly.”
A year ago, Marsh was the one who needed to find his way back. Stubbs helped him get there — not by overhauling anything, but by reminding a good player that he was still a good player.
Bohm got his reset. The belief in the room has not changed. And neither has the memory of what Marsh looked like before it all turned around.
That is the point Stubbs knows better than most. Sometimes it starts with remembering who the player already is.
