PITTSBURGH – Kyle Schwarber can’t really explain why he’s on a tear right now.
“It’s a great question,” Schwarber said.
One the Philadelphia Phillies slugger isn’t particularly interested in answering. All he knows is that he’s found a little something. Even more importantly, so has his team.
So even on a night the Phillies designated hitter smashed a pair of two-run homers that boosted his season total to a major league-leading 20 and drew a bases-loaded walk during a ninth inning rally, Schwarber was quick to deflect attention to all that was happening around him during an 11-9, 10-inning victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Friday night.
Schwarber reached 20 homers on the earliest date in MLB history, according to Stats Perform, bettering Arizona’s Luis Gonzalez, who hit his 20th on May 17, 2001. The Phillies slugger also tied a club mark with 20 homers in the team’s first 45 games, first set by Cy Williams in 1923.
Bryce Harper, batting behind him, had four hits, including a tying single after Pirates closer Gregory Soto walked Schwarber on four pitches to pull the Phillies within two. Backup catcher Rafael Marchan delivered a two-run single in the 10th. Orion Kerkering picked up his first save of the season and just the third of his career.
“There’s so much good that went on today that we were able to respond and fight back,” Schwarber said. “That’s a really positive thing for us.”
The win pushed Philadelphia’s record to 13-4 since Don Mattingly replaced Rob Thomson as manager and pulled the Phillies to within a game of .500 (22-23). The fact that surge has come in lockstep with Schwarber going off is not a coincidence.
“It’s pretty amazing,” Mattingly said. “He’s a different cat from the standpoint of how he does it. … He’s dangerous all the time. Doesn’t matter really lefties or righties, either one.”
Schwarber went deep off both to fuel Philadelphia’s rally from a six-run deficit. He took Pittsburgh right-handed starter Braxton Ashcraft over the fence in the fifth. The Pirates pulled Ashcraft in favor of left-hander Mason Montgomery with one on and two outs in the seventh. It didn’t matter. Schwarber turned on a 96 mph fastball that caught too much of the plate and sent it into the seats in right-center field to draw the Phillies within three.
The two blasts gave Schwarber nine home runs in his last eight games. It’s the second time in his career he’s had that many homers in an eight-game span. Former slugger Albert Belle is the only other player in major league history to have that kind of prolific run twice.
“One of the cooler things I’ve seen in baseball,” Harper said. “Just the ways he puts the bat on the ball. Yeah, it been pretty fun to watch.”
For Schwarber, the fun part isn’t watching the ball sail from the barrel of his bat to the farther reaches of the ballpark but what the scoreboard reads at the end of the night.
A 10-game slide in April cost the popular Thomson his job. Mattingly — who’ll miss Saturday’s game to attend his son’s graduation at Purdue — has steadied things. It’s helped that one of baseball’s best (and most expensive) lineups is starting to produce.
Yet even as hot as Schwarber is at the moment, he’s not getting ahead of himself. His most impressive at-bat Friday might have been the one where the bat never left his shoulder.
With the Phillies down three in the ninth, Schwarber let four consecutive sinkers from Soto go by rather than take a hack and try to make something happen. He trotted to first base and Harper followed with a long single off the top of the wall in right-center to pull Philadelphia even.
“Greg’s got great stuff and he’s got a really nasty sinker in the bigger slider, so it’s just kind of really keying in on what you want,” Schwarber said. “And once I get 3-0, I was happy with the take.”
He was even happier with what came next as the Phillies took another step toward looking like the team that has been a postseason fixture the last four years. While front-running Atlanta remains well ahead in the NL East, Philadelphia’s early season funk has passed and momentum seems to be building, which Schwarber is far more concerned about than whatever home-run total is next to his name.
“Obviously we know it’s not anywhere near complete, right?” Schwarber said, later adding, “It’s been really cool to see the guys go out there and getting their results and us as a team, to be able to kind of get the results that we want.”
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