Kyle Schwarber has made the leadoff spot his own, and it’s powering the Phillies’ home-run barrage
In many ways, Kyle Schwarber is the perfect encapsulation of the 2023 Phillies. He is imperfect. He does not fit the mold. And, in these October days, he is hitting a ton of dingers.
Schwarber hit two more in a 10-0 thrashing of the Arizona Diamondbacks Tuesday that has the Phillies with a 2-0 advantage in the NLCS. His were two of three long balls on the night for Philadelphia, which Sarah Langs pointed out set an MLB record with 15 home runs across its past four postseason games.
Three of those belong to Schwarber, each coming in the same postseason round that ignited him in last year’s World Series run. He already has three homers in this year’s NLCS — the same number he had in last year’s, as well as the ensuing World Series. Schwarber has been a Phillie for two seasons, and half of his 18 career postseason home runs have come in those two seasons.
He is, already, just two shy of Jayson Werth’s all-time franchise postseason home run record (though Bryce Harper, one above him with 10, is a moving target). Since signing with the Phillies, including the postseason, Schwarber has bashed 102 big flies.
But imagine a world in which this version of Kyle Schwarber didn’t exist.
Plenty has been made of Schwarber’s unique fit in the leadoff spot. He homers like a cleanup hitter, singles like a bench player and runs like a pitcher who is slow even for pitchers. It’s an unusual skillset for that spot in the order. And it was not always by design.
Schwarber first was a regular leadoff hitter in 2017, when Dexter Fowler left for St. Louis after he and Schwarber helped the Chicago Cubs break their 108-year World Series drought. Schwarber filled the leadoff opening on occasion that ’17 season, but it did not go well. He had five plate appearances there in 2018, then hit for an .825 OPS with 17 homers in 56 games at leadoff in 2019. He had just five more plate appearances there in a dreadful 2020 that led to an eventual non-tender by the Cubs.
Schwarber didn’t know how to approach the role. He had a model in Fowler — who Schwarber called on Tuesday “one of the best leadoff hitters” — but Fowler was the classic higher-average, lower-power, higher-speed center fielder who had defined the leadoff spot for a century.
In other words, he was not Kyle Schwarber.
“You try to replicate that,” Schwarber said of filling Fowler’s void in 2017. “You might not have success because, for me, I’ve got an eye. I can walk.
“Speed is definitely in play,” he joked, perhaps remembering his first-to-third on Bryce Harper’s single to right in the seventh inning of Game 2. “Not really.”
So Schwarber embraced those strengths in 2021, and the results were staggering. He hit leadoff in 27 of his 113 games with the Nationals and Red Sox, hitting .297 there — with 17 homers, 10 singles and 14 walks. His greatest production that season came atop the lineup, and he posted a career-best .928 OPS that ultimately landed him a four-year, $79 million deal with the Phillies last March.
You know the rest.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve sucked at it,” Schwarber said at mastering the art of hitting leadoff. “I’ve had a lot of trial and error, and luckily, over the last few seasons, the last probably three seasons, it’s been pretty consistent in that spot. You know, it’s just more making it your own, right? … I’ve been pretty comfortable with it the last three years. Just had a lot of at bats there. It fits for our lineup.”
Neither of Schwarber’s two homers in NLCS Game 2 led off the ballgame, but he did blast a 427-foot tater to lead off the sixth inning when the game, then 2-0, was still within reach. And his first homer of the series did lead off a game on Monday, when Zac Gallen’s first pitch of the night left his hand at 92 mph and Schwarber’s bat at 117.
Gallen may have grown up a Cardinals fan despite living just a few miles from Citizens Bank Park, but still — the first-pitch laser was a rude welcome to his childhood hometown ballpark, and certainly a rude welcome to his first-career NLCS.
“As a catcher, I know what the opposing pitcher and catcher are thinking about all day long before a game. Even the night before,” J.T. Realmuto said after Game 2, sitting next to Schwarber in Citizens Bank Park’s press conference room. “They’re worried about that first at-bat. They’re worried about the first pitch.
“Schwarbs is the best in the game at making the opposing pitcher feel uncomfortable before the game even starts. There’s never a moment where they feel like ‘Oh, we can just ease into this game.’ They have to be on their top game the first pitch of the game. And that’s not fun as a pitcher. Like I said, he’s the best in the game at that, and he just sets the tone for our offense … He is never an easy out. That’s what you are looking for out of your leadoff.”
Schwarber may not have been an “easy out” in the Wild Card Series or NLDS — but he was an easier one. He had just one hit across the first two rounds. (One, fittingly, was a leadoff double on the first pitch of NLDS Game 1.)
It was still double his hit total across those two rounds last year. But that postseason, he woke up in the NLCS with a bang — in fact, with several of them. He’s doing the same this time around.
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