Categories: Features

In return to site of mammoth NLCS homer, Kyle Schwarber weighs in on bizarre season

Kyle Schwarber is having a 2023 to remember, in many ways. (Photo by Zac BonDurant/Icon Sportswire)

SAN DIEGO — The Phillies’ NLCS against the San Diego Padres won’t be remembered for the portion at Petco Park. No World Series berth was clinched there. The series didn’t even swing there; the teams split the first two games before heading back to Philadelphia, where the real chaos — bedlam, even — took place.

But the San Diego leg of that series is nonetheless remembered as a significant part of the Phillies’ World Series journey, if only for a poor baseball that Kyle Schwarber sent into orbit in the sixth inning of Game 1.

The Phillies landed in San Diego on Sunday for their first trip back to Petco Park since those first couple games of the NLCS. And while the Padres might need a late-season miracle to return to the postseason themselves, the cross-country trip offers an opportunity for Schwarber and the Phillies to look back on a brief but memorable chapter in their Cinderella Fall Classic run.

“I just think it’s good to be back in a place that we had some fond memories and some good wins,” Schwarber told Phillies Nation on Monday. “To be back — and obviously, it’s San Diego, who can hate the weather out here? — it’s exciting to be back, and hopefully we get some really good crowds this week and see what happens. It’s gonna be fun.”

That upper-deck shot is the defining home run of an early Phillies tenure for Schwarber that’s been characterized by long balls. Long balls — and a bunch of weirdness.

“Weird” might be the best word to describe Schwarber’s 2023, if that’s not a massive understatement.

No player in baseball history has ever hit 40 home runs in a season while hitting under the Mendoza Line. Schwarber, barring a September homer drought or a (relative) tear in the batting average department, is on his way to becoming the first.

Oh, and he also has the second-most strikeouts in all of baseball.

And the second-most walks.

It’s hard for anyone to grapple with those kinds of numbers all coexisting in one row of a Baseball-Reference page.

It’s hard even for the man producing them.

“I think anyone would be crazy to tell you ‘I’d like a .190 batting average,’” Schwarber said. “I don’t like that. But I think the biggest thing now is just, I’ve kept telling myself throughout the season, it’s just trying to find a way to be productive. Productive for the team. Trying to help the team win. And, heck, if I’m able to get on base for the guys behind me and let them drive me in, or if I’m creating runs, driving in runs, whatever it is, I think that’s the best way to look at it.”

When the Phillies gave Schwarber a four-year, $79 million contract before the 2022 season, they didn’t exactly project him to be a .320 slap hitter. That’s not who Schwarber is, nor who he’s ever been. But these first couple years have been extreme even by his own standards.

His yearly batting averages with the Phillies — .218 and .190, so far — are the third-lowest and lowest, respectively, full-season marks of his career. His home run totals — 46 last year; 39 (and counting) this year — in his first two Phillies seasons are the two highest home run totals of his career. He’s already set career highs and second-mosts in strikeouts in his first two years as a Phillie. Same goes for walks.

It’s not just abnormal for any given baseball player in the history of the sport. It’s abnormal for Schwarber, already an extremely abnormal baseball player.

“You know, heck, it’s — K-Long kinda painted the picture,” Schwarber said. “He goes ‘You’ve got a hundred and thirty-something singles.’ You know what I mean? With walks and hits. So, just trying to get on base for those guys and drive in as many runs as I can.”

In its own weird way, it’s worked for the Phillies. They’re 25-11 this season when Schwarber homers, and 18-9 when he walks multiple times.

When Schwarber goes, the Phillies go. He hit only 13 homers (modest for him) through the first 58 games of the season. The Phillies went 26-32. He’s hit 26 in the 77 games since. The Phillies are 48-29 in that span.

That June turnaround, typical of Schwarber throughout his career and, perhaps uncoincidentally, the Phillies as a whole since they signed him, has propelled the team to the forefront of the Wild Card race. If the season ended on Labor Day, the Phillies would earn the NL’s No. 1 Wild Card spot. They’d host the best-of-three Wild Card Series against the Chicago Cubs team with which Schwarber spent the first six years of his career, becoming the bizarre anomaly of a hitter that he became before expanding the boundaries of abnormality and weirdness in Philadelphia.

“It’d be fun, right?” Schwarber said of possibly meeting his former employer to open the postseason. “You know, we’ve still got a long ways to go for us, so we’ve gotta make sure that we keep focused on ourselves, keep putting ourselves in really good positions as we keep making this final push and we’ll see where we’re at. But, you know, if it ended today, I think it’d be a pretty fun Wild Card round.”