LOS ANGELES – With his team facing its seventh consecutive series loss, Kyle Schwarber had the night of his life in a spirited comeback victory for the Phillies to conclude a key three-game series at Dodger Stadium.
Schwarber opened the game with a home run, scored two runs in the fifth inning, hit a three-run home run into the right-center field seats in the sixth inning, and capped it all off with another solo home run into center field in the ninth inning.
Three home runs, seven RBI.
The Phillies won 9-4 after trailing by three runs going into the fifth inning. They lost the first game of the series on Monday but rebounded on Tuesday and Wednesday to claim the victory. They have won three of four games and appear to be returning to form after losing 14 of 19 games.
“It seems like sometimes we’re in a little bit of a slump and he re-energizes the club with a home run or a big home run somewhere,” manager Rob Thomson said. “He’s a lot like Harp (Bryce Harper) in that respect.”
The Phillies are 68-46, 2½ games ahead of the Dodgers, the best record in the National League, and once again have the best record in the Major Leagues.
“It was pretty cool, it was pretty cool,” starting pitcher Tyler Phillips said of Schwarber’s night. “After the second home run, he told me, dude, that was great what you did, you kept us in the game. I was like, dude, you just gave us the lead, that was great what you did. He said, no, you don’t understand. We almost got into an argument. I thought, you’re having an incredible night. It was really cool to put so much faith in him, and the other hitters did their jobs.”
Schwarber is, perhaps quietly, having a career year. He doesn’t have quite as much power at bat, but he’s made significantly more contact and has become a more complete hitter. He has a batting average of .260/.390/.504 this season with 27 home runs, 73 RBI and 82 walks, which leads the National League. The only other major league players to have matched or exceeded his OBP and home run totals are Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge and Juan Soto.
Schwarber also posted a .340 batting average against left-handed pitchers, improving his career average against lefties from .183 to .223 in less than one season.
“Just the fact that he wanted to reduce his strikeouts this year cleared all that up,” Thomson said. “Now he’s staying on the ball, he’s reduced his swing with two strikes, it’s a little bit like a two-strike approach. The average is going up, he’s putting the ball in play more often and the on-base number is going up because he’s getting more hits. It all goes hand in hand.”
“The fact that he’s doing this at this stage of his career is really smart. It shows me how much he cares about things and how well he can adapt.”
While he didn’t have nearly as great a night as Schwarber, Johan Rojas’ signature was all over Wednesday’s win. Rojas entered the game in the third inning after Austin Hays suffered a hamstring injury and ended the fourth with one of the Phillies’ best defensive plays of the season, a 64-foot run and leap to the wall in right-center to steal extra bases from Teoscar Hernandez.
In the next half-inning, Rojas hit an infield single to change the lineup and bring the tying run to the plate with one out. He stole second base and scored when Schwarber hit a double.
When he returned to the field, Rojas worked a walk from Joe Kelly to load the bases for Schwarber in a tie game. Kelly threw a wild pitch that scored Brandon Marsh, and a few throws later, Schwarber made his mark.
The Phillies’ great inning was facilitated by an interference call by third base umpire Hunter Wendelstedt. He ruled that Kiké Hernandez interfered with Alec Bohm’s slide into third base after a bunt by Marsh. Hernandez did this unintentionally as he ran to the base to make the tag. Such a call cannot be reviewed and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was ejected after a passionate argument.
Nick Castellanos remained in top form with two doubles, a walk and a hit by pitch. He had multiple hits in all three games of the series and has a batting average of .288 with 20 doubles, two triples and nine home runs in 242 plate appearances since May 29.
It took all of the offense to overcome an early hole, but Phillips also held up his end of the bargain by picking himself up after two shaky innings. The Dodgers got him to two runs in a long first inning and scored two more in the second on a bloop single by Freddie Freeman, but Phillips allowed just one baserunner in his final three innings. He also calmly knocked Ohtani out of action in the infield all three times he faced him.
It was a great comeback after Phillips allowed three home runs and eight runs without getting past the second inning on Friday night in Seattle.
“You have to make some adjustments,” he said. “Obviously the first two innings weren’t ideal for me. But as the game went on, we talked to JT (Realmuto) and (pitching coach Caleb Cotham) and we just started finding certain pitches that worked.”
“And I had a conversation with Casty between one of the innings where he just came over and tried to calm me down. We talked about it a lot, it’s just about competing and throwing the ball across the plate. Just, ‘Go out there, man, fight, you’ve got weak contact, you’re making throws, just make sure you’re ahead and keep fighting.'”
The Phillies now move on to Chase Field, a stadium with painful memories of the 2023 NLCS. The Diamondbacks are the best team in baseball, 12-2 over the last two weeks and averaging more than 7.0 runs per game.
“I thought we played pretty well even in Seattle, at least at the end of the series,” Thomson said. “Hopefully we can get back to where we were.”
