PHILADELPHIA -- Kyle Schwarber kept calm and stayed ready to hit the fastball.
So many people outside the Phillies’ clubhouse lately have wanted to see something different or drastic happen following the team’s slow start. They wanted to see bat racks and helmets smashed, the spread flipped in the clubhouse and the manager pulling players from games as punishment for their actions. But players like Schwarber prefer to stay even keeled and maintain a routine and approach that has worked in the past and they believe will work in the future.
So, Schwarber did his pregame work, then stepped into the batter’s box in the first inning of Monday night’s 13-7 victory over the Cubs at Citizens Bank Park ready to hit the fastball.
“If you’re ready for a fastball, you’ve got a chance at the breaking ball and offspeed,” he said.
Schwarber took a first-pitch fastball from Cubs right-hander Javier Assad for a strike. Assad followed with a changeup down in the zone.
“Just tried to ride it out for as long as I could,” Schwarber said.
Schwarber went down to get it. He dropped the barrel on it as he dropped to his right knee. The ball left his bat at 103.5 mph and sailed 414 feet into the shrubbery in center field to give the Phillies a 1-0 lead.
“That’s kind of the result whenever you’re out in front and you’re working down to that ball there,” Schwarber said. “And the knee goes down, too. I don’t think it’s been the first time that’s happened, but that’s kind of the thought process there.”
The Phillies limped out of Citizens Bank Park on Sunday having lost two consecutive series to fall below .500. They not only squandered scoring opportunities in the series finale against Arizona, but they twice ran into outs on the bases, prompting Bryce Harper to critique the effort by saying, “Yeah, just bad baseball.”
But Schwarber’s first-inning homer on Monday jolted a Phillies’ offense that had not scored runs in consecutive innings since April 3.
The Phillies scored in the second inning to take a 2-0 lead. Schwarber hit a two-run home run to right in the third to make it 4-0. The Phillies scored five runs in the fifth inning, three in the sixth and one in the seventh, too.
An offense that had scored runs in just six of their previous 62 innings had scored runs in six of the first seven against the Cubs.
“It’s awesome,” Schwarber said. “It’s fun. We love scoring runs. We love going out there. We love getting the job done. That’s why we show up. That’s why we play.”
Schwarber spoke on Saturday about not wanting hitters to feel like they “badly need” a big inning or a big game because it pushes them to try to do something more than they can.
“The context of that,” Schwarber said Monday, “is we always want to do it. We want to get that big hit. We always want to get the inning going, whatever it is. The meaning of that is, the more you really try to go out there and do that, the more that you might just expand, the more you might try to go out there and do too much. Versus, when you look around the room, we got a lot of really good players, and that's why I mean staying within ourselves and doing what we do. I'll take our chances on a daily basis with that.”
Alec Bohm snapped a 0-for-17 skid with a single in the third inning. Adolis Garcia snapped a 0-for-13 skid with a single in the fifth. J.T. Realmuto had his first three-hit game since Aug. 18.
“The words of Rhys Hoskins,” Schwarber said. “It’s always stuck. It’s just, ‘Get to the plate.’ There’s always a chance when you get to the box. Right? Let’s get to the box. There’s always going to be a chance. They’ve been in here, they’ve been putting in the work. They’ve been doing a lot of great things in the cage, and trying to prepare themselves to go out there and compete. They stay on it on a daily basis.
“And then when you go out there and you finally get your result, it’s not shocking. Every time they step up to the plate, we think they’re going to do something good. It’s the nature of us.”