Phillies fans are upset that things are currently trending towards Alec Bohm hitting cleanup on Opening Day. It's important to remember, though, that the Phillies tried to prevent that from happening when they made a serious pursuit of Bo Bichette in mid-January.
Had the Phillies signed Bichette — who has twice led the American League in hits — he could have hit anywhere in the top four in the lineup, turning a perceived weakness at the cleanup spot now into a strength. In that instance, not only would Bohm not be hitting fourth for the Phillies, but there's a good chance he would have been traded away. Whether Bichette played third base, as he will with the Mets, or second base and pushed the Bryson Stott/Edmundo Sosa platoon to third base, Bohm likely would have been the odd-man-out.
Of course, things didn't play out that way. After losing out on Kyle Tucker, the New York Mets swooped in and signed Bichette to a three-year/$126 million deal with opt outs after each season.
As part of a larger answer about the narrative of "running it back," managing partner John Middleton confirmed in a recent interview with Scott Lauber of The Philadelphia Inquirer that the night before the Mets signed Bichette, the Phillies thought they were going to land the two-time All-Star:
"...But it’s also not like we didn’t try. First of all, we re-signed Kyle. We could have let him go like the Mets, let [Edwin] Díaz go or [Pete] Alonso go. We re-signed J.T. We tried to sign Bichette. We actually thought we had a deal. At 11 o’clock that night, we had a deal, in our opinion. Not finalized. And the Mets did nothing that we wouldn’t have done and haven’t done, so I don’t blame the Mets. But you went to bed at 11 o’clock thinking we had a deal, and I woke up at 8 o’clock worried we didn’t have a deal, and two hours later, I knew we didn’t have a deal. So, it’s not like we didn’t try. We did try to tweak the team."
Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported that the Phillies final offer to Bichette was seven years and $200 million. It appears that was going to be the winning offer.
But Steve Cohen and the Mets got aggressive in a hurry after losing out on Tucker, who signed a four-year/$240 million deal that features the chance to opt out after the second season with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Unsurprisingly, the soon-to-be 28-year-old jumped at the chance to sign a three-year/$126 million contract with the Mets, one that will allow him to opt out after 2026 or 2027.
The Phillies — who don't like to include player opt outs in contracts — declined to match that deal. Because he was a qualified free agent, the Phillies would have had to give up second and fifth-round picks, along with $1 million in international bonus pool money, to sign Bichette. It wouldn't have been a smart business move, because there's a very real chance Bichette opts out and returns to free agency next offseason.
But would there have been more excitement around the 2026 Phillies if they had matched the offer to the Mets, future consequences be damned? For sure.
Instead, Bichette will come to Citizens Bank Park for the first time this season on June 26, likely to be showered with boos as a member of the Phillies' top rival.
