J.T. Realmuto can no longer outrun the brutality of his chosen profession. The Phillies catcher, having battled knee discomfort all spring, is having right knee surgery. While Realmuto has dealt with knee pain for weeks, this is nevertheless startling news. Realmuto’s durability is the thing that makes him special; in 11 major league seasons, this is only his fourth stint on the IL (including a COVID quarantine period in 2021), and none of his previous trips have lasted longer than 22 days.
Moreover, Phillies Doomerism, as a mental health condition, is frequently comorbid with Sixers Doomerism. People who suffer from the latter probably heard the word “meniscus” flashed back to Joel Embiid collapsing in a heap and taking the Sixers’ season with him.
It’s not quite that bad. Realmuto is headed for the longest injury absence of his career, but absent some bizarre complication, he’ll be back well before the end of the regular season. Even if that weren’t the case, no baseball player is as important to his team as Embiid is to his. Nevertheless, the Phillies were built under the assumption that Realmuto would always be available. So even a brief absence is going to be problematic. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Houston Astros. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »
Hurston Waldrep is one of my favorite pitchers in the minor leagues. Or rather, he was, because the Braves called him up this weekend and gave him his major league debut on Sunday. Waldrep was the no. 24 overall pick in the draft last year, and I was by no means alone in considering that selection a steal for Atlanta.
A year ago this weekend, Waldrep was pitching the University of Florida to the College World Series; on Sunday, his opponent, the Washington Nationals, was somewhat more challenging. Waldrep’s line in his debut ended up being extremely ugly: 3 2/3 innings, four hits, four walks, only one strikeout, and seven earned runs allowed. Atlanta lost the game 8-5, and Waldrep got charged with the decision, leaving him with a career record of 0-1 and an ERA of 17.18.
Waldrep’s first big league start ended in disaster, but up until the point where it all went wrong, the rookie showed incredible promise. So let’s look a little deeper, because amid the pile of runs, you can see why I’m still so high on Waldrep, and why he could end up being immensely important to the Braves later this year. Read the rest of this entry »
Last Sunday’s column led with Detroit Tigers infielder/outfielder Matt Vierling reflecting on his days as a two-way player in high school and at the University of Notre Dame. This week’s leads with a former two-way player whose career path took a different turn. A native of Saginaw, Michigan who played shortstop and served as a closer at the University of Nebraska, Spencer Schwellenbach is currently a member of the Atlanta Braves starting rotation.
His big-league debut came sooner than expected. The 24-year-old right-hander was drafted in 2021 — Atlanta selected him in the second round — but because of Tommy John surgery he didn’t take the mound until last year. At the time of his May 29 call-up, Schwellenbach had just 110 minor-league innings under his belt. Moreover, he hadn’t thrown a pitch above the Double-A level.
His two-step call-up is something he’ll never forget.
“They actually told me I was going to Triple-A,” said Schwellenbach. “I showed up in Gwinnett, threw a bullpen, and after I got done they asked if I was all packed up to go to Virginia. I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve got all my stuff here.’ They were like, ‘Well, unpack your stuff, you’re throwing in Atlanta on Wednesday.’ I was so taken off guard that I didn’t know what to say. It was like, ‘holy crap.’ I called my parents, my fiancee, my brothers, my sister. It was awesome.” Read the rest of this entry »
Max Fried hadn’t yet established himself when I first talked to him for FanGraphs in April 2018. While highly regarded — the San Diego Padres had drafted the southpaw seventh overall in 2012 out of Los Angeles’ Harvard-Westlake High School — he had just a smattering of innings under his big league belt. Fast forward to today, and Fried — acquired by the Atlanta Braves in a December 2014 trade the Padres presumably wish they hadn’t made — is one of the best pitchers in baseball. Moreover, he has been since the start of the 2019 season. With the caveat that pitcher win-loss records need to be taken with a large grain of salt, the 30-year-old hurler has gone 66-23 over the last five-plus seasons; his .742 winning percentage ranks first among his contemporaries (min. 50 decisions). Fried’s ERA and FIP over that span are 3.00 and 3.20, respectively, and in the current campaign those numbers are 2.93 and 3.22.
His hitting also bears mention. In 2021, the last year before the National League adopted the DH, Fried had the highest batting average (.273), on-base percentage (.322), wRC+ (77), and wOBA (.289) among pitchers with 40 or more plate appearances. While not exactly Wes Ferrell, Fried could more than hold his own in the batter’s box.
How has the Atlanta ace evolved as a pitcher since we spoke six years ago, and does he miss stepping up to the plate with a piece of lumber in hand? I broached those topics with Fried on Wednesday afternoon at Fenway Park.
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David Laurila: You were relatively new to the big leagues when we first spoke. Outside of being older and more experienced, what has changed since that time?
Max Fried: “Honestly, I would say it’s just experience, just constantly evolving and taking from what I’ve learned over the years. A lot of it has been commanding my pitches better, throwing them for strikes and keeping guys off balance.”
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Miami Marlins. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »
On Tuesday morning, Major League Baseball announced the suspension of five players for violating Rule 21, the prohibition on betting on baseball. Minor leaguers Jay Groome of the Padres, José Rodríguez of the Phillies, Michael Kelly of the Athletics, and Andrew Saalfrank of the Diamondbacks were all suspended for one season.
But the headline figure in the announcement is Padres utilityman Tucupita Marcano, who has been declared permanently ineligible after betting some $150,000 on baseball games — a mix of MLB and international contests — through legal sportsbooks. Marcano placed 25 bets on games involving the Pirates last summer while he was on Pittsburgh’s injured list and receiving treatment at PNC Park. While all five players placed bets on their parent clubs, the key distinction is that Marcano did so while assigned to the major league team. For that, he became the first player to receive a lifetime sanction for this offense since Pete Rose 35 years ago. Read the rest of this entry »
When we last checked in on Aaron Judge on April 24, the big slugger was scuffling, hitting just .180/.315/.348 through the Yankees’ first 24 games. He had homered just three times, and was approximating league-average production thanks mainly to his 15.7% walk rate. A smattering of fans had booed him on his own bobblehead day at Yankee Stadium, when he struck out in all four plate appearances, and the haters on social media were sure that he was washed. Since then, he’s turned his season around in emphatic fashion, destroying opponents’ pitching, taking his place atop a few key leaderboards, and helping New York assemble the AL’s best record at 42-19.
Judge homered three times in a three-game series against the Giants at Oracle Park this past weekend while helping the Yankees to a sweep. It was the Linden, California native’s first time playing at the park of his favorite childhood team, and the ballpark he would have called home had Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner’s last-ditch effort to re-sign him in December 2022 not succeeded. He went yard twice off Jordan Hicks in Friday night’s 6-2 win, first with a three-run shot and later a solo one, then connected off Logan Webb for a two-run blast in a 7-3 win on Saturday; the 464-foot projected distance on that one made it his third-longest of the season. He merely went 2-for-3 with two singles, two walks, and two steals in Sunday’s 7-5 win, with Juan Soto filling the power vacuum by homering twice.
Every major league player has great individual performances on his résumé, and that’s especially true when you include their time in the minors and amateur ball. From youth leagues on up, they’ve had games where they’ve stood out among their peers with epic displays at the plate and/or the mound. When you’re good enough to have advanced to the highest level of your profession, such showings come with the territory.
With this in mind, my colleague Michael Baumann and I recently asked a dozen players a straightforward question: “What has been the best game of your life?”
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Sal Frelick, Milwaukee Brewers outfielder: “I think I was part of one of the greatest college comebacks in NCAA history. We were down to Auburn 9-1 in the ninth inning, with two outs, and ended up coming back to win. I led off the ninth inning with a single, came around to score, then came back up as the tying run and hit a homer. We went into extras and won the game. This was in 2021 [with Boston College], my draft year. It was an absurd rally.
“I hit for the cycle one time in the Futures League. This was with my summer ball team, the North Shore Navigators. It was after my senior year of high school, before my freshman year at Boston College, and the game was in Worcester. I went strikeout, walk, double, triple, homer, single. A strikeout and a walk, then the cycle. That was crazy.”
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Riley Greene, Detroit Tigers outfielder: “I hit for the cycle at Hagerty High School [Oviedo, Florida]. I’m almost positive that it was the first cycle in school history. I could be wrong, but yeah, it was that game. I started off with a leadoff homer — I was hitting leadoff — and then I went single, double, triple. We were playing Edgewater High School and it was a pretty big game. We had a beef with that team, so it was pretty cool to do it against them in front of all my boys, who I’m still best friends with to this day.
“What probably stands out the most from here is my first homer, the walk-off homer [against the Royals in 2022] to win the game. That’s pretty special.”
“The best game I’ve ever pitched in my life was in college [at Texas State University in 2012]. I was a starting pitcher. We were playing Notre Dame, who was really good at the time. And, here’s a fun fact about that weekend: In the three-game series we didn’t allow an opponent to reach third base. We were in the middle of one of the longest consecutive scoreless streak in modern NCAA history; we threw something like 50 scoreless innings. I pitched the Saturday game in that series and went seven innings with 12 strikeouts. I struck out the first seven guys that game.”
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Josh Lowe, Tampa Bay Rays infielder: “I had a three-homer game my senior year in high school. That would probably be the best game I can remember. It was early in the year and it was freezing cold. The temp was in the upper 20s and it was super windy. I grew up outside of Atlanta and while it doesn’t get that cold often, it does get cold.
“One game in Triple-A, I think I had five or six plate appearances and hit all five or six balls over 105 [mph]. I’d say that was a pretty good game. It was against Jacksonville. I don’t remember anything specific about it outside of having five or six at-bats and hitting the ball hard five or six times.”
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Christian Yelich, Milwaukee Brewers outfielder: “You’re a FanGraphs guy, so what’s better, a three-home run game — probably that one? — or 6-for-6 and hitting for the cycle? I don’t know if I’ll be able to beat [the latter]. Three home runs is pretty cool, but going 6-for-6 and hitting for the cycle is pretty cool, too.
“[Amateur ball], I can’t really remember. I’ve spent 12 years in the big leagues, so high school was a long time ago. I’m sure there were some decent ones back in the day, but everything that happens here is obviously more special for me.”
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Matt Vierling, Detroit Tigers infielder/outfielder: “The game the other day was pretty good [4-for-6 with two home runs, including a walk-off three-run homer, against the Toronto Blue Jays]. There have been a couple of them, but the best game of my life was probably in high school. We were in the state semifinals when I was a sophomore and I threw six innings [and allowed] no runs, and also hit two home runs. It was the most fans we’d had at a game — about 2,000, which was a ton for us in Missouri — and it got us to the state championship game.
“Another good one was when I was with the Phillies. I went 5-for-5 against the Blue Jays. This was in 2022, the year we went to the World Series, and we needed a couple of wins to keep things going. Along with the 5-for-5 — everything seemed to find a hole — I ended up hitting a walk-off single. It was a great game.”
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Jonny DeLuca, Tampa Bay Rays outfielder: “My senior year of high school, in the first game of the year, I went 6-for-6 with a grand slam, another home run, a triple, and three singles. It was a home game, and while I know we won, I don’t remember what the score was. I don’t think I’ve had a game that comes close to that one.
“In pro ball, last year was pretty cool when I made those two catches against Texas. I made a diving catch and then kind of robbed a home run. It’s up for debate if it would have been a homer or not, but yeah, that game last year.”
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Jordan Weems, Washington Nationals pitcher: “I had a game with five punchies when I was with Double-A Portland. That one really stood out, because I had really good stuff that night. In the big leagues it would have to be the one in Seattle where I had the bases loaded, got out of it, then came back for another inning to shut them down and we got the win.
“As a kid… I mean in 9- or 10-year-old All-Stars there was a game where I went something like 5-for-6 with two home runs. That was in a championship game to go the regionals. That was a pretty cool experience. Not trying to brag, but there were a lot of cool games in Little League, high school, and all that. I remember a playoff game, right before the state championship, I went 3-for-4 with two home runs. This was in high school.
“Another time — I could go forever on these — we lost the first game [of a high school playoff series] to Matthew Crownover, a big lefty who went to Clemson but then had Tommy John and never really came back from it. He was throwing really hard and kind of shoved it up our butts, so we had to win the second game. We were down by a run going into the bottom of the seventh inning, and I led off with a double. Cody Walker, who went to Mississippi State as a catcher, had this great at-bat. He hit a ground ball up the middle and I scored to tie the game. I remember going crazy at home plate after sliding in safely. We ended winning to force a Game 3, then went on to win the state championship.”
“There were a couple of games in high school, but I’ve got to go with my [MLB] debut, which was in Detroit last year. I got called up and struck out seven out of nine guys. That’s pretty high up there in the best game I’ve ever played. Like, I didn’t really have any expectations. At the end of the day I just wanted to throw up some zeros, so the strikeouts were kind of like a cherry on top. To be honest, it was kind of an out-of-body experience to strike out that many guys. It was almost a blur. It was a pretty crazy experience.”
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Whit Merrifield, Philadelphia Phillies infielder: “The first thing that comes to mind is the College World Series [with the University of South Carolina, against UCLA, in 2010] — the walk-off World Series with the walk-off hit. I’ve had better individual games; I’ve had a couple five-hit games, multi-homer games, a six-RBI game, but I honestly can’t really remember the games [specifically]. I remember the World Series game like it was yesterday.
“[In the ninth inning] our leadoff guy walks. Evan Marzilli gets the bunt down — good bunt — the pitcher fields it and throws to first. Watching from my angle, I thought he had thrown it away, because he kind of short-hopped it. The guy made great play at first base to catch it.
“Trevor Bauer is warming up in the bullpen. I’m thinking that he’s going to come in to face me. I step up. The manager goes to the mound. I’m thinking he’s going to bring [Bauer] in, but he doesn’t. He walks back to the dugout and I’m thinking they’re going to walk me. Jackie Bradley, who’d had a great World Series, was behind me, and Christian Walker was behind him. Christian was a freshman, so I’m thinking they’re going to walk me and Jackie, and pitch to Christian with the bases loaded.
“I really don’t have any intention to hit. Catcher is standing up, then finally squats down. As soon as he squats down I get a rush of nerves and emotion. Balls one and two aren’t really close pitches. I’m thinking unintentional intentional walk; they’re going to try to get me to chase something. Guy takes awhile, shakes off some pitches. I end up calling time. Like I said, in my head I’m thinking they’re going to try to walk me. But I thought to myself, ‘You’ve got a chance to win the World Series here. If the ball is close, I’m swinging. I’m going to try to win the game.’ He threw a good pitch, a fastball down and away — not really a good 2-0 pitch for a hitter to go after — but I made a good swing and hit the ball to right. We won. I can’t believe it was 14 years ago.”
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Spencer Torkelson, Detroit Tigers first baseman: “Minor leagues, Double-A Erie, and it wasn’t one game; it was a doubleheader. In two seven-inning games, I went 7-for-7 with three home runs, a double, and [six] RBIs. I remember it felt like I was literally seeing a beachball for a whole day. It was amazing.
“I had a couple of two-homer games [as an amateur], but nothing crazy. I think my greatest [quality] growing up was just how consistent I was. It wasn’t like really high, really low, really high, really low; it was just being consistently good. I’m sure there were some really good days in travel ball, but I can’t really remember. There is no book on that.”
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Zack Littell, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher: “Off the top of my head, I don’t really know. Especially in pro ball, they all kind of run together. I don’t know that I have that kind of memory. I guess there was one in high school. I had a game in our conference championship where I had two home runs, a double, and a single. I went 4-for-4 and also threw seven innings. We won 3-1, or something like that. In terms of sheer everything, it would probably have to be that one.
“I’d had one home run all year, and then in our three-game conference tournament I had three, including two in the championship. And again, I pitched seven innings. I was Shohei Ohtani that day. That’s the way I like to think of it.”
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Thanks to Michael for procuring the quotes from Grant Anderson and Whit Merrifield.
Last year, Kyle Schwarber became the first player in MLB history to drive in more than 100 runs (104, to be exact) in a season with a batting average below .200. He was also the first player to hit 40 home runs (he hit 47), score 100 runs (he had 108), or draw at least 120 walks (he drew 126) despite getting a hit in fewer than one-fifth of his at-bats. The fact that he finished tied for third in the NL in plate appearances (720) certainly helped him compile those counting stats – no other hitter has ever topped 650 PA with an average so low – but there was no denying that Schwarber was a valuable offensive player despite his league-worst .197 batting average. He became the second qualified, sub-.200 hitter in history to post an OPS above .800 and came just shy of beating 2021 Joey Gallo for the highest-ever wRC+ in a qualified, sub-.200 season; Gallo finished that year at 121, while Schwarber was at 119 in 2023.
When I hear those fun facts, my inclination is to celebrate Schwarber and his unusual accomplishments. Sure, he’d be a better ballplayer if he could bat .300 and still club 40-plus homers and draw 120-plus walks, but that’s not really saying anything. Just as chocolate cake would be better if it were chocolate cake with ice cream, Schwarber would be better with Luis Arraez’s batting average. That’s not analysis; it’s a Facebook graphic asking you to build your dream hitter with $15. The fact of the matter is that Schwarber is excellent at what he does, batting average be damned.
Unfortunately, not everyone is so inclined to focus on the positives. When Schwarber himself spoke about his season last September, he couldn’t help but lament his low batting average: “Heck, do I like seeing a .193 [batting average]? No. Do I wish I was hitting higher? Absolutely.”
Schwarber elaborated this spring, telling Scott Lauber of the Philadelphia Inquirer, “If you’d have told me I was going to hit .190-whatever and hit 47 bombs and drive in 100, score 100, and punch out 200 times, I would’ve said you’re crazy. But it happened, right? I lived it.”
In Lauber’s words, the slugger spent the winter “figuring out how to never, ever live it again.” To be clear, Schwarber understood that he was still productive at the plate last season, but he wanted to be more than a three-true-outcomes player. As he put it: “I just know that there’s more [of a] hitter in there.”
I hate to destroy the illusion of my journalistic objectivity, but I must admit the Phillies fan in me was scared by Schwarber’s comments. Except for Bryce Harper, who because of injuries played just 225 of the team’s 324 regular season games across 2022 and ’23, Schwarber was probably Philadelphia’s most dangerous bat over his first two seasons in the City of Brotherly Love. He didn’t need to change. Call me a metathesiophobic, but when it comes to a 31-year-old, nine-year veteran, I say if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Yet, 60 games into the year, it certainly seems like Schwarber’s offseason efforts are paying off. His TTO% is lower (50%, down from his league-leading 53.8% in 2023) and his batting average is significantly higher than last year’s .197. In fact, his .239 batting average is only a tick below league average. Among qualified players from 2023 and 2024, only seven have seen a higher year-over-year increase. What’s more, Schwarber’s overall numbers haven’t taken a hit like I worried they would. He is enjoying another strong season at the plate with a .341 wOBA, .356 xwOBA, and 122 wRC+, all of which place him among the top 25 qualified batters in the National League.
All that being said, I haven’t seen enough to allay my preseason fears. The best way for a hitter to reduce his TTO% and increase his batting average is to cut back on strikeouts and make more contact, but that’s not what Schwarber has done. He has struck out in 29.5% of his plate appearances, right in line with his 29.9% rate last season, and his 34.1% whiff rate is a career high. Instead, the 2022 NL home run leader is sacrificing long balls for base hits. If you’re familiar with the basic rules of baseball, you’ll see why that’s a problem: The farther you make it around the bases, the better.
Schwarber is on pace for 30 home runs this year. He hit 47 last year and 46 the year before. He crushed 32 home runs during an injury-shortened 2021 campaign. Thirty homers is nothing to scoff at, but Schwarber is sending the ball out of the park at the lowest rate of his career. The same is true for doubles and, thus, extra-base hits overall. He is currently averaging an extra-base hit once every 17.3 plate appearances; his career pace entering the season was once every 10.2 PA. To be fair, power is down across the league this season; the league-average isolated power (.147) has never been lower since Schwarber debuted in 2015. Even so, his career-low .170 ISO this season is only 20% higher than league average. That’s a big step back for a slugger whose career ISO (.259) is 56% better than that of the average hitter. Similarly, his .408 slugging percentage, which would be the lowest full-season mark of his career, is only 5.4% above average. For his career, his .486 slugging is 17.7% better than the average hitter in that span.
Without the context of Schwarber’s preseason comments, the simplest explanation for his dropping power numbers might be age-related decline. However, the poster boy of the Phillies’ “ball go boom” lineup has not lost a lick of strength. His 54.9% hard-hit rate, a new career high, places him among the top 10 qualified batters in the sport. And although we can’t compare his bat speed to previous seasons, the fact that it sits in the 99th percentile makes me pretty confident he has not entered his decline phase quite yet.
Another explanation for Schwarber’s low home run rate could be his typical streakiness. He has a reputation for heating up later in the season, specifically during June, August, and September. He had a 95 wRC+ through the end of May in 2023 and a 102 wRC+ through the end of May the year before. However, his extra-base hit rate was still significantly higher during the first two months of 2022 and ’23 than it is right now. He averaged an extra-base hit once every 12.5 PA in March/April/May during his first two seasons with the Phillies; as a reminder, that number is one extra-base hit every 17.3 PA so far this year.
Instead of representing a step back or a slump, this looks like a deliberate adjustment on Schwarber’s part. Although his hard-hit rate is higher than ever, his barrel rate is a career low. His launch angle sweet spot rate is the lowest it’s been since 2020, the worst season of his career. On a related note, his groundball rate (39.6%) is significantly higher than it was during his first two seasons with the Phillies (33.8%), while his fly ball rate is significantly lower (down from 50.3% to 42.4%). Among qualified hitters from the past two seasons, he has seen the eighth-largest decrease in fly ball rate. According to a recent piece by Phillies beat writer Alex Coffey, Schwarber’s teammates and coaches have started joking that “he’s a slappy leadoff hitter now.”
For what it’s worth, Schwarber has been a better groundball hitter this season than in years past, and I can’t say I’m surprised. He’s a talented hitter, and I didn’t doubt he could change his approach if he wanted to. He said he was going to improve his directional hitting this year, and he has done exactly that, pulling fewer groundballs in favor of sending them up the middle, and he is making more hard contact on those groundballs. It’s further evidence that he’s hitting more grounders with intention, but hey, at least it’s working. Except… his BABIP on groundballs is absolutely, undeniably, without a doubt unsustainable. The league average BABIP on groundballs this season is .242. Schwarber’s career mark entering the year was .204. So far in 2024, he is running a .368 BABIP on the ground. That’s not to say Schwarber has merely been getting lucky; his .246 xBA is actually slightly higher than his actual batting average. However, he can’t keep this up. No one can maintain a BABIP on groundballs this high, especially not such a slow runner. Schwarber is due for some regression, and it when comes, he won’t be able to continue replicating his past production with his new approach.
Another thing Schwarber wanted to improve this season was his consistency. He didn’t want to prop up mediocre performances in April, May, and July with strong showings in June, August, and September. Unfortunately, baseball is inherently volatile, and he might be about to learn that BABIP is even more fickle than home run-to-fly ball ratio.
I tend to think consistency and well-roundedness are overrated. Schwarbombs, on the other hand, are a thing of beauty. Including the postseason, no batter crushed more no-doubters last season than Schwarber. Indeed, thanks to his power stroke, he has been the author of some of the most exciting moments in recent postseason memory. A common criticism of the three true outcomes is that they make baseball less interesting, aesthetically speaking. However, that criticism is more relevant for the sport as a whole, rather than specific batters. On an individual level, TTO hitters are part of the diverse landscape of players that make the sport so wonderful. As Michael Baumann put it, “One of the beautiful things about baseball, or any sport, is the emergence of varied and seemingly contradictory paths to success.”
If Schwarber continues to produce like a top 30 hitter in the National League, I doubt the Phillies will complain about his new path to success. That said, as he strives to become a jack of all trades, he runs the risk of devolving into a master of none. For the sake of his slash line – and the sake of Schwarbombs – he might be better off going back to his old ways.
