LOS ANGELES — With his team facing a seventh straight series loss, Kyle Schwarber had the night of his life as he led the Phillies to a commanding win to end a massive three-game series at Dodger Stadium.
Schwarber scored early in the game, doubled in the fifth, rocketed into the right-center field for a three-run triple in the sixth, and closed it out with another single to center field in the ninth.
Three home runs, seven RBIs.
Philadelphia won 9-4 after going down three runs in the fifth inning. The team lost the series opener on Monday but rebounded to win Tuesday and Wednesday to clinch the series. The team has won three of four games and appears to be reclaiming its form after losing 14 of 19.
“There seem to be times when we go through a downturn and he’ll inject energy into the club with a big kick or a big hit somewhere. He’s a lot like Harper in that way,” said manager Rob Thompson.
Philadelphia has a 68-46 record, 2.5 games ahead of the Dodgers, for the best record in the National League, and once again has the best record in the majors.
“It was a great night, a great night,” starting pitcher Tyler Phillips said of Schwarber’s night. “After the second strike, he said, ‘Dude, that was huge, you kept us in the game.’ I said, ‘Dude, you gave us the lead, that was huge.’ He said, ‘No, you don’t understand.’ We were about to get into an argument. I said, ‘You’re having an unbelievable night.’ It was really great that I put so much faith in him, and the rest of the batters did their jobs.”
Schwarber appears to be having a great year in his career. He hasn’t hit as hard, but he’s made more contact and has transformed himself into a more complete hitter. He’s batting .260/.390/.504 this season with 27 home runs, 73 RBIs and 82 walks, a National League record. The only other major league players to match or surpass his average on-base percentage and total home runs are Shohei Otani, Aaron Judge and Juan Soto.
Schwarber also posted a .340 batting average against left-handed pitchers, raising his career mark against left-handed pitchers from .183 to .223 in less than one season.
“The fact that he wanted to cut back on the number of strikes he was taking this year said it all,” Thompson said. “He’s keeping the ball, he’s reduced his swing by two strikes, there’s a little bit of a two-strike approach here. The average is going up, he’s putting the ball in play more and the base count is going up because he’s getting more strikes. It all works together.”
“The fact that he’s doing this at this stage of his career is really smart. It shows me how much he cares and how adaptable he is.”
His performance wasn’t as strong as Schwarber’s, but Johan Rojas’s mark was clear in Wednesday’s win. Rojas entered the third inning after Austin Hayes suffered a hamstring injury and finished the fourth with one of Philadelphia’s best defensive performances of the season, leaping 64 feet to the wall in right center to deny Teoscar Hernandez extra bases.
In the next inning, Rojas beat a single into the outfield to turn things around and send the tying run to the plate with one out. He stole second base and scored when Schwarber hit a double.
When he got up again, Rojas caught a pass from Joe Kelly to load the bases for Schwarber in a tie game. Kelly threw a wild pitch that Brandon Marsh scored, and a few pitches later Schwarber added an exclamation point.
Philadelphia’s huge inning was helped along by umpire Hunter Windelstedt’s decision to obstruct play, ruling that Kiké Hernandez had interfered with Alec Bohm’s slide to third base after Marsh had hit a shortstop. Hernandez had done so inadvertently when he ran to the bag to put the ball in the basket. Such a decision cannot be reviewed, and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was ejected after a heated argument.
Nick Castellanos has been in top form with two doubles, one hit and a run batted in. He has also hit multiple times in all three games of the series and is averaging .288 with 20 doubles, two triples and nine home runs in 242 plate appearances since May 29.
A full-strike attack was necessary to overcome an early gap, but Phillips also held up his end of the bargain by settling in after two shaky innings. The Dodgers managed to score twice in a long first and scored twice more in the second on a Freddie Freeman single, but Phillips allowed just one runner on base in his final three innings. He also quietly got Ohtani out of the infield all three times he faced him.
It was a big rebound after Phillips delivered three home runs and eight runs without getting out of the second inning Friday night in Seattle.
“There are some adjustments that need to be made. Obviously the first two halves weren’t ideal for me. But there were conversations with JT (Relmotto) and (pitch coach Caleb Cotham) as the game progressed and we just started finding some pitches that worked,” he said.
“There was a conversation between me and Kasty at halftime, where he came up to me and helped me calm down. We talked a lot about it, just competing and throwing the ball over the plate. Just, ‘Go out there, man, compete, you’re getting poor contact, you’re hitting balls, just make sure you step up and keep competing.’”
Philadelphia now moves to Chase Field, a stadium that holds painful memories from the 2023 National League Championship Series. The Diamondbacks are the hottest team in baseball, with 12 wins and two losses over the past two weeks and an average of more than 7.0 points per game.
“Even in Seattle I thought we played pretty well, at least at the end of the series,” Thompson said. “Hopefully we can get back to where we were.”
“Infuriatingly humble internet trailblazer. Twitter buff. Beer nerd. Bacon scholar. Coffee practitioner.”
