Kyle Schwarber is on the Philadelphia Phillies for one reason, to hit home runs. Now obviously he is also a leader in the clubhouse and does a lot of things off the field, but the bulk of his job description is to hit the ball really really far as much as possible. Kyle is great at his job as he is only behind Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani in most home runs since 2021, when he joined the Phillies. But something happened in 2023 that may never happen again in the game of baseball. This blog will be very analytical and stats driven so please bear with me as I nerd out a little on the numbers.
2023 was a great year to be a Phillies fan. Coming off of a World Series loss, the hope for the Phillies could not be any higher as everyone was set to return back to the team that made the playoffs for the first time in over a decade. Kyle Schwarber led the league with 47 bombs in 2022 and was hoping for the same as his spot in the lineup batting leadoff was safe and secure. Lets get into why Kyle Schwarber bats leadoff.
If you have ever watched the movie Moneyball, I think we can all say it in unison, he gets on base. Kyle Schwarber is a walk machine. He had 126 walks in 2023 which ranked him 2nd in the entire league behind Juan Soto. Kyle's .343 on base percentage barely sneaks into the top 50 that year, but thats only a small part on why he is there. Kyle Schwarber brings the boom to start the game. He started 11 games with a home run and his stats boost to a slash line of .241/.389/.667 when Schwarber leads off a game, that is a hall of fame worthy stat line. So yeah, that is why Kyle Schwarber bats leadoff and not your typical 3-4-5 like he normally would.
What makes this season so weird? Well there is one thing I have not mentioned yet. Kyle Schwarber hit below .200 in 2023. The big thing about hitting below .200 is that it usually means you’re a below average player no matter how good you are in other facets of the game. Kyle Schwarber fought hard to try and get above what is known as the Mendoza line. His last 2 months he hit .225 and they were by far his 2 best months of the year. However it was not enough as he ended the year with a measly .197 average. Kyle ended the season with 47 home runs which is a career high for him and good enough for 2nd in the league behind Matt Olson. That might be the only normal part about this season for Kyle. Also Kyle lead the league in strikeouts with 215 which is also pretty normal for a player like Kyle Schwarber. One last fun little fun fact that you can tell the hot chicks at the bar is that Kyle Schwarber only had one more single than he did home runs in the 2023 regular season. If you include the 2023 postseason his singles to home run ratio gets even crazier. Kyle had 5 home runs and only 3 singles in the post season. This brings his season totals to 52 home runs, and 51 singles. How crazy is it that a player is more likely to hit a home run than a single. The only other player I can think of that also did this was Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs in 1998 with only 61 singles. But Mark hit .299 that year and broke the record for home runs in a season so I feel like he gets a little bit of a pass.
So what does all of this mean? Well it means that Kyle Schwarber can hit some absolute tanks and hold on, let me think... yep, that is about it. But to baseball guys like myself, it means that Kyle Schwarber had one of the most 3 true outcome seasons of all time. The 3 true outcomes are a walk, strikeout, or home run and our guy was the top 2 in all 3 of those categories. Throw on top of that having more home runs than singles and only accumulating .6 WAR, were looking at an all time weird season.
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That, is today's Tea, with T
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