PHILADELPHIA -- Kyle Schwarber walked into the Phillies clubhouse at 9:08 p.m. on Saturday.
Their game against the Twins had ended 24 minutes earlier. All of Schwarber’s teammates had returned by that point. Many had gone to eat. Others had showered and changed. But Schwarber was still in uniform. He had bats in his hands.
He had gone 0-for-4 with two strikeouts in a 5-0 loss.
So, he visited the batting cage.
“That was just me being mad,” Schwarber said.
Schwarber hit .240 with 56 home runs, 132 RBIs and a .928 OPS this season. He led the National League in home runs. He led Major League Baseball in RBIs. He should finish in the top five for NL MVP.
He had the best year of his career -- entering free agency, no less -- and it didn’t happen by accident. He worked at it, which meant countless hours in the batting cage.
“That’s his sacred space,” Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long said.
It’s a place to work, learn and talk.
“I didn’t even swing anything,” Schwarber said about Saturday night's pitstop. “I just went down there, talked crap, watched the game over again. I do that every once in a while. There’s times for that. There’s times for everything. There’s going to be times when you can go in the cage, take 30 swings and you’re like, ‘OK, here we go. I’m good.’ There’s going to be times when you take 30 swings, you think you’re good, then you go in the game and you feel like you don’t have it. So you go back into the cage, take another 30 swings, or 100 swings.
“There’s days that you take 200 swings, 300 swings. You’re falling over, ready to pass out. ‘I need a breather.’ And then you just go sit down, take 10 swings before the game and you go out there and take what you’ve got.”
Schwarber hit his 55th and 56th homers last Wednesday in a game against the Marlins. His third-inning blast against Marlins left-hander Ryan Weathers was his 23rd homer against a lefty, which are the most by a lefty batter vs. a lefty pitcher in a season in baseball history.
Schwarber was proud of the accomplishment.
“There’s been a lot of hard work put into that,” he said. “It kind of takes you back to 2020, getting non-tendered, then you sign a one-year deal and get with a really good hitting coach [in Long]. He came up with a plan and attacked it and it’s grown over the years.
“Hopefully, it keeps going.”
Schwarber's turnaround
Schwarber was at a crossroads in 2021.
The Cubs non-tendered him in December 2020. The Nationals signed him to a one-year contract a little more than a month later.
“When he came to the Nationals, he was excited,” Long said. “But he also thought that he was going to be playing against lefties. I was like, ‘I don’t think you’re going to be playing every day. I think they’ve got a platoon in mind for you.’ He said, ‘I’m not here to be a platoon player. I said, ‘Well, these numbers don’t indicate that you should be playing against lefties.’ He was inept against left-handed pitchers. It was just known.”
Schwarber batted .189 with a .597 OPS against lefties in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. In his career, he batted .197 with a .649 OPS against them, compared to a .239 average and an .859 OPS against righties.
“We’ve got to do something about it,” Long said.
“Well, let’s start now,” Schwarber said.
Long flew from Phoenix to Tampa, Fla., three days later. They put a plan together. They worked.
“It didn’t happen overnight,” Long said.
But Schwarber got better.
“It’s nothing like you see now,” Long said. “The consistency is much better than it was then. But I think it’s just four years of doing the same thing and being intelligent with his work and his process and then figuring out whatever adjustments he needs to make.”
It never stops. Before Friday’s series opener against the Twins, Schwarber stepped into the cage at 1 p.m. for a 6:45 p.m. first pitch.
He emerged two hours later.
He wasn’t hitting the entire time. He was studying video of Twins starter Joe Ryan. He was watching his teammates. He was talking about hitting.
“He’s like A-Rod,” Long said, referring to Alex Rodriguez, whom Long coached with the Yankees. “A-Rod was so meticulous. He’d watch replays of every game. He’d want to dissect his at-bats from the previous night. If there was any kind of in-game adjustment he needed to make, he wanted that information. Kyle’s like that. A-Rod’s routine was almost bulletproof. Kyle’s is very, very similar. He’s very detailed. He wants to know the whys. He wants to know what he should be doing better.
“You wouldn’t believe the time and the effort he puts into it.”
Where memories are made
Hitting is hard and so is the work, but Schwarber loves it.
Good times are had in the batting cages. Great memories are made there.
“It’s baseball talk,” he said. “You can watch other guys’ swings. You can be talking about your swing. There’s a lot of time when guys are sitting down, they’re waiting to hit, there’s just a lot of different conversations in there. It’s like that in the clubhouse, too, but guys are also running around, getting treatment and trying to get ready for the game. Here, guys are talking about the pitcher, talking about the game yesterday, they’re watching video. It’s just enjoyable. Right?”
Schwarber still remembers his first day in the big leagues in 2015. Manny Ramirez side flipped him balls in the home clubhouse at Wrigley Field. He still remembers the time he saw Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard and Carlos Ruiz hitting in the batting cages at Wrigley.
“They’re just sitting there, talking crap and I’m just some rookie looking up and I’m like, ‘This is awesome,’” he said.
Schwarber’s teammates share similar stories about him.
Otto Kemp remembers a game in Atlanta in June. They were in the cage, waiting out the rain. Schwarber was running through games and teams he had played for. He’d remember a moment in a specific game. He’d recall the date, then punch it up on the iPad and watch it.
“He’s like a baseball encyclopedia,” Kemp said. “He was watching video yesterday, and I was giving him a hard time about it. He’s like, ‘I’ve got to get better.’ I’m like, ‘I know, I know.’ I just like giving him crap for it because for me, it’s really hard to watch video, see something, try to mess around with it, then go into a game and apply it. He knows himself really well. He studies himself. When he feels something, he’s not rushing to say, ‘Hey, let’s go find some video evidence of it.’ He’ll work through the feel. He’s analyzing. He’s just very good at separating his work from his play.
“Sometimes, you get guys that dig a lot, and then when they get in the box, you can see them thinking about it. Kyle’s not that way.”
Weston Wilson sees the same thing.
“The cage can put somebody in a bad place, if they’re in there too much,” he said. “For Kyle, I don't think it's that way, because I think everything's intentional. It's not rash, like, ‘Hey, I had no hits today. I'm gonna go to the cage right after the game and work myself to death.’ I think Kyle is smart.”
Every moment has a purpose.
“There’s always a reason why,” Schwarber said. “I’m not going in there taking swings just to swing. Everything I do, in there, in the box, there’s a meaning behind it. I can tell you why I went from first to third. I can tell you why I stopped at second. Most of the time, I can tell you why I took or why I swung at a pitch. I have a game plan. You have to have a reasoning behind what you do. It’s having a thought in your head before anything happens. I have a game plan when I’m on deck and then when I go into the box I’m trying to execute that.”
The work has been done by that point. It’s time to compete.
But tomorrow, the work begins again. It never stops. He would have it no other way.
“There are so many cool things that can happen down there,” he said.