'He sees everything': Slugger Schwarber is also All-Star teammate

CINCINNATI -- Kyle Schwarber is here to help.

He learned last weekend that he made his fourth NL All-Star team, and his third with the Phillies. It’s well-deserved. He leads Major League Baseball with 32 home runs. He has been one of the top 10 hitters in baseball, based on OPS.

He is not only one of the game’s most feared home run hitters, but he is known throughout baseball as a great teammate, tireless worker and baseball savant. (His NL teammates will see it up close next week.) It’s why Bryce Harper told The Athletic recently that if he ever owned a team, he would hire Schwarber as his manager.

“I’m not thinking about that right now,” Schwarber said this week at Great American Ball Park.

Of course not. Schwarber just signed a five-year, $150 million contract this past offseason. He could finish this season with 400 career home runs. Five-hundred career homers certainly seems within reach, too, if he stays healthy.

Then, maybe, Cooperstown.

“I told him in five years if he wants to manage and if he needs a DH, I’ll come play for him,” Alec Bohm said, smiling. “I make that joke all the time.”

But why?

“He has a really good baseball mind,” Bohm said. “He’s a great clubhouse guy. He’s just one of those guys that fits.”

A few teammates this week shared stories about how Schwarber has helped them, whether he is in the batting cage, watching the action on the field or facing a teammate in Spring Training.

They ask Schwarber questions about themselves because they know he doesn’t miss a thing.

“That’s the former catcher in him,” Bohm said.

In the spring of 2024, Phillies ace Zack Wheeler was tinkering with a splitter. He had thrown the pitch in early bullpen sessions, preparing for live BPs. Wheeler wanted Schwarber to stand in the box to face him.

“He sees everything,” Wheeler said. “He’s a big league hitter. He sees spin. He can tell if you’re slowing up. So I face him in a live BP, I throw a few splitters and he was like, ‘I can tell when you throw the split because your arm slows, your body slows down.’ So, that next day, I went in there and I threw it with some aggression, rather than just trying to make it do something. And ever since then … I don't think about it anymore, because now it's just natural.

“Like, if he never said that to me … ”

Maybe that pitch isn’t the weapon it is today.

Schwarber has told Orion Kerkering in the past about how he holds and moves his glove before throwing certain pitches. Just recently, after Kerkering gave up a couple of hits in a game, Schwarber reminded him to go check the video to see if he might be tipping his pitches or not.

“If he can spot it with his naked eye, then some guy sitting behind a computer can easily look and see that, too,” Kerkering said.

Bohm recalled a moment earlier this season, as he was suffering through a brutally slow start, when Schwarber looked at old video and detected changes in his swing.

“There was a time in Tampa, too, we were just talking more so about positioning and that sort of stuff,” Bohm said. “He’s definitely helped me at different times throughout my time with him, little things here and there, but important things.”

Other teammates do this, of course. But Schwarber is well known for seeing things that others can’t.

Former Phillies spoke this way about Chase Utley.

“I don’t have any special ability,” Schwarber said.

But it’s easier to spend the time to find these things when you love your job so much.

“I enjoy the game, I enjoy baseball, I enjoy my teammates,” Schwarber said. “You enjoy the people. You want to get the best out of everyone. You always want to feel like you’re always there to support people in every way possible. And I want them to feel like they can treat me that way, too. If you have something to offer me, I want to hear it.”

So, Schwarber will keep watching and helping. And maybe beyond, if he ever decides to manage one day.