Kyle Schwarber has a strong MVP case. History shows being a DH will likely cost him.

The sound washes over Kyle Schwarber almost nightly now in these waning days of summer. It showers him when he steps in the batter’s box in Philadelphia — and, really, anywhere the Phillies play.

M-V-P! … M-V-P! … M-V-P!

It’s a worthy tribute to a slugger who endears himself to fans and teammates alike with his Paul Bunyan strength and unifying personality. Across 11 years and four major league organizations, it’s difficult to find anyone who doesn’t like Schwarber.

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Schwarber is at his career apex, too. At age 32, with free agency looming after the season, he enters the weekend leading the league in homers (45) and the majors in RBIs (109). He’s slugging .584 with a .957 OPS, and is jockeying with fellow MVP candidate Trea Turner for most wins above replacement (4.0, according to Baseball-Reference) of any position player on the first-place Phillies.

Oh, and here’s the best part: After struggling early in his career to stay in the lineup against same-side pitching, Schwarber leads all left-handed hitters with 17 homers against lefties, including 11 against lefty relievers, the most by a left-handed hitter since Barry Bonds hit 11 in 2002.

“He’s been our guy this whole year,” said Bryce Harper, a two-time National League MVP, who gets the best view in the house of Schwarber from the on-deck circle. “He’s been coming through in any situation, any spot. It’s been great to see. I cheer for the guy. He’s a big-time leader on our team. It’s so much fun to watch him hit.”

Sounds very MVP-ish, doesn’t it?

But history suggests that Schwarber won’t be the NL MVP. He might not even finish among the top three in the voting, conducted at the end of the regular season by members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Because although designated hitter has existed since 1973 in the American League and 2022 in the NL, only one full-time DH has been crowned MVP.

And all it took for Shohei Ohtani to break the DH shutout streak last year was achieving the first-ever 50-homer, 50-steal season.

Is there a bias against DHs in the MVP voting?

David Ortiz thinks so. The Hall of Fame slugger, primarily a DH during his 20-year career, had five top-five MVP finishes but never fared better than runner-up in 2005 to Alex Rodriguez. Last year, Ortiz told reporters in the Dominican Republic that voters “always had issues not to give me the MVP because I was a designated hitter.”

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Making 50/50 history last year made it impossible to deny Ohtani, the unanimous MVP choice. He’s the front-runner again, but not only because of his offense (44 homers and a 1.017 OPS through Wednesday). It’s also his return to pitching, with a 4.61 ERA in 10 starts after coming back from Tommy John surgery.

As long as Ohtani remains a two-way player, the MVP debate might be moot.

But there are other NL candidates, including Fernando Tatis Jr. (Padres), Pete Crow-Armstrong (Cubs), Elly De La Cruz (Reds), and Turner.

One thing they have in common: they play defense.

Will being a DH hold back Schwarber in the MVP voting, as it did with Ortiz, Edgar Martinez, and others?

“It’s a great question,” Schwarber said in a recent conversation with The Inquirer. “I haven’t really thought about it. I feel like [DH] should be considered a quote-unquote productive position. Just because you’re not playing on one side of the ball, you’re having an impact on your side of the ball at a higher level than what you normally expect a guy who’s playing on both sides of the ball to do.

“When you look at David, Edgar Martinez, [Jason] Giambi in the years when he wasn’t playing first base as much, I’m pretty sure that if you were to ask their teammates, they appreciated what those guys did at the plate.”

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The Phillies are inherently biased, of course. But manager Rob Thomson, who spent a decade on the Yankees’ coaching staff while Ortiz tormented New York, said he has seen Schwarber make a similar impact.

“I don’t know where we’d be without him,” Thomson said.

Turner added: “Without him and what he brings as a leader of the clubhouse and all that, I think when you’re talking about valuable, he’s just as valuable as anybody. He’s got the numbers to back it up, but when you look at the whole picture of the story, I think he’s more than deserving.”

Schwarber has five more weeks to keep building his case. In the meantime, how does he rate against some of the best non-Ohtani DH seasons of all-time? Let’s dive in.

The biggest hit in Mariners history came on Oct. 8, 1995.

Martinez ripped a splitter from the Yankees’ Jack McDowell down the left-field line to score Ken Griffey Jr. from first base. The Mariners vanquished the Yankees in Game 5 of a division series that stands as the most epic five-game series in baseball history.

Three decades later, it’s still known in Seattle simply as “The Double.”

And if the MVP voting hadn’t occurred one week earlier, maybe Martinez would’ve won.

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Not only did Martinez capture the AL batting crown with a .356 average, but he led the league in runs (121) and all of baseball in doubles (52), on-base percentage (.479), OPS (1.107), and adjusted OPS (185), meaning he was 85% better than league average.

But the MVP went to Boston’s Mo Vaughn, who narrowly edged Cleveland’s Albert Belle. Martinez finished a distant third, a snub that irked him throughout his career.

“I think a DH should be able to win,” Martinez told the Seattle Times 10 years later. “If a pitcher that pitches every five days can be MVP, why can’t a DH, who is playing every day and producing for his team?”

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It was a fair question. But pitchers don’t get love in the MVP race, either. A pitcher hasn’t won the MVP since Clayton Kershaw in 2014. Before then, Justin Verlander (2011) is the only other pitcher to win MVP since 1992.

Martinez had other big years but never sniffed an MVP. He won his first batting title in 1992 … and finished 12th in the MVP voting; he batted .345 with 37 homers and led the league with 145 RBIs in 2000 … and finished sixth.

He was a five-time winner of an award created by MLB — and voted on by writers, broadcasters, and team PR directors — to annually honor the best DH in the sport. The award was renamed for Martinez in 2004.

Ortiz’s best MVP finish was second place in 2005, when he hit 47 homers and led the majors with 148 RBIs. But he had even better numbers in 2006.

And, somehow, he came in third in the MVP voting.

It surely didn’t help Ortiz’s case that the Red Sox missed the playoffs in 2006, two seasons after winning their first World Series in 86 years. But he led the AL in homers (54) and RBIs (137) while batting .287 with a 1.049 OPS.

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Like in 1995, the MVP race was closely contested, just not by the star DH, with Minnesota’s Justin Morneau edging Yankees legend Derek Jeter.

Over the next 10 years, Ortiz averaged 31 homers and 100 RBIs but never finished better than fourth in the MVP voting. But as a major league coach with the Yankees from 2008 to 2017, Thomson took a different view.

“For years, we were up against David Ortiz, and I always said, all those years, he’s an MVP candidate,” Thomson said. “He was so good against us.”

Schwarber went deep in his first at-bat for the Phillies on April 8, 2022.

He hasn’t stopped.

Since 2022, he has 176 homers, entering the weekend, tied with Ohtani and trailing only Aaron Judge (196). Schwarber and Ryan Howard (2006 to 2009) are the only players in Phillies history with at least 38 homers in four consecutive seasons.

But even by Schwarber’s standards, this year is his best.

Start here: Schwarber is closing in on Howard’s single-season franchise record of 58 homers in 2006. Howard won the MVP that season. But he also played first base.

When Harper missed three weeks in July with an injured right wrist, Schwarber was an aircraft carrier for the offense with six homers and an .856 OPS, despite lacking lineup protection.

“I think Schwarbs is in the conversation — he’s got to be,” Thomson said. “And I’m OK with it because many times this year he’s put us on his shoulders. He’s carried us.”

Said Schwarber: “I don’t know what goes into how people vote. But I think that if you’re looking at some really big numbers that are being put up, just because someone doesn’t play on the other side of the baseball, it’s still impacting the game in a very significant way that needs to be taken notice of, right?”

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Last month, Schwarber hit three homers in a row to decide the first-ever swing-off when the All-Star Game was tied after nine innings. For that, he was crowned MVP.

Will it be the only MVP that he wins?

“I feel like every year they change the MVP talk to fit into whatever narrative, like [playing for a] winning team or what not,” Turner said. “But the game’s changed a little bit to where hitting homers is probably the most important thing in the game. When guys aren’t doing it at as high a clip or offense might be a little down, I think that’s the difference in him.”