PHILADELPHIA — Kyle Schwarber likes a good fall day. “Maybe 52 degrees,” he was saying just after midnight Wednesday in the Phillies’ clubhouse. “Something like that. Maybe a little brisk, but it feels great.” Tuesday night had none of that weather. Tuesday night, Game 3 of the World Series, was warm, the air thin, the baseballs tending to take off like fighter jets when the Phillies connected with them. Five home runs in all in their 7-0 Game 3 victory over the Astros — Bryce Harper’s the most electrifying but Schwarber’s the longest, 443 feet to dead center field, blasting through trees and ivy and thudding against the Citizens Bank Park batter’s eye.
Harper has been drawing the baseball-watching world’s attention for his superhuman postseason, but take a look: Since the start of the National League Championship Series, Schwarber has been even better, a monster in those eight games. Four home runs, nine walks, a .360 batting average, a 1.369 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, all from the first hitter in the lineup.
It’s not enough to call him the Phillies’ tone-setter. He’s not so much setting a tone as he is crashing through the front door, grabbing the first pair of drumsticks he sees, and going full John Bonham as his teammates reach for their guitars.
Game 3 was the perfect example of why Schwarber is an unorthodox leadoff hitter and a perfect leadoff hitter — a truth that it has taken many old-school Phillies followers and baseball thinkers to accept throughout this season. He’s not fast, and he should bat third or fourth! Power hitters should always hit third or fourth! No, not all of them. He was on base for Harper’s first-inning blast, having worked a full-count walk against Astros starter Lance McCullers Jr., so pretend for a moment that Schwarber was a different kind of leadoff hitter. Pretend that he wasn’t a home-run threat, that he was the stereotypical leadoff guy — speedy, capable of stealing a base.
Might steal a base, but what are the chances that he’ll hit the ball out of the park? So the opposing pitcher pounds him with fastballs, because the opposing pitcher wouldn’t want to risk walking a guy like that.
What pitcher wants to throw nothing but fastballs to the only player in the National League who, between the regular season and postseason, has hit 50 home runs? Who has that combination of power and pitch selection? No, thank you. That pitcher is going to be cautious.
“When you have somebody like Kyle, it opens up the pitcher’s entire arsenal from the get-go,” Phillies right fielder Nick Castellanos said. “So everybody else gets to see right away what his change-up might look like, what his sliders might look like, what his curveballs might look like. Does he have a feel for them? From the very beginning, it didn’t look like Lance was too confident in landing his pitches for strikes. Right away, he was picking at his finger, looking at his hand. Maybe if it’s not Kyle leading off, who knows if he has to throw any offspeed pitches?”
Now, add in another dimension: the atmosphere at Citizens Bank Park, the 45,000-46,000 people causing the place to vibrate with sound. “Nobody wants to give up that first-pitch home run to a leadoff hitter,” catcher J.T. Realmuto said. “The crowd would obviously erupt.” Maybe it’s not a coincidence that Schwarber was 0 for 16 through the Phillies’ first four playoff games: two in St. Louis, two in Atlanta. Maybe he needed the juice here to get him going.
“Just time,” he said. “Time.”
That, and a setting that turns pitchers squirrelly. McCullers, who sure seemed to be doing something to tip his pitches to the Phillies, spun a few breaking balls at Schwarber in the bottom of the fifth, and with Brandon Marsh on first, Schwarber recognized, from McCullers’ grip on the baseball, that a changeup was on the way.
“I want to be aggressive,” Schwarber said. “I look for my pitch. If it’s not there, I’m going to take it. That’s the biggest thing for me. I’m not going to change what I do well just because I’m in that leadoff spot. What I do well is try to stay in the zone. I don’t need to have this conception of my at-bat that I need to see pitches. The situations are going to dictate things like that. I’m just trying to look for my pitch.”
He got it. He’d have swung at it if it had been the first pitch of the game. He’d have swung at it anytime. He stood at the plate, measured the drive for a moment, then put his head down and started trotting toward first. Remember when he wasn’t the right leadoff man for this team? Remember what he wasn’t hitting a month ago? Two wins from a championship for the Phillies. Two wins from the best fall night that Kyle Schwarber could imagine.
