Kyle Schwarber has become the biggest lineup problem as the Phillies (again) face playoff doom

LOS ANGELES — It’s a ticklish proposition when everybody’s favorite player is also the team’s biggest problem.

Everybody loves Kyle Schwarber. It’s impossible not to. He’s a kind and generous star, a strong and effective player, an accountable and reasonable man. He is a gentle bear who hits Schwarbombs.

He just can’t hit them in the playoffs anymore.

Schwarber makes the least money of the Phillies’ Big Five bombers. That’s a group collectively under contract for $927 million that includes Schwarber, Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, J.T. Realmuto, and Nick Castellanos, that is hitting .171 with zero home runs and 13 strikeouts in the first two games of the NLDS, both losses. The Phillies managed just three runs in each game.

“The pitching’s been good,” Harper explained Tuesday.

“I think those guys are trying to do a little too much right now, instead of just being themselves and looking for base hits,” said manager Rob Thomson. “The power will come.”

Will it, though?

No one had been less effective than Schwarber. In this series, he’s 0-for-7 with five strikeouts and a consolation walk, worked in a fruitless sixth inning of the Game 2 loss in Philadelphia that set up Wednesday’s Game 3 in Los Angeles.

This goes deeper than just the 2025 National League Division Series.

Schwarber is just 3-for-28 in his last eight playoff games. Two of those hits, and his only home run, came in the same contest, Game 1 of the NLDS last season against the Mets. In the other seven games he’s 1-for-26 with no home runs and 13 strikeouts.

You know what else happened in those games? The Phillies lost Games 6 and 7 of the 2023 NLDS to the Diamondbacks, lost three of four in the 2024 NLDS against the Mets, and lost the first two games of this NLDS to the Dodgers.

» READ MORE: ‘The writing’s on the wall’: Phillies face elimination after their billion-dollar bats go silent again

It’s not all Schwarber’s fault, but, after one of the best walk years in sports history — he led the NL with 56 homers and led all of baseball with 132 RBIs — he is closing in on free agency and closing out another feeble postseason.

In the last five playoff games, all losses, he’s 0-for-18.

It’s not that his at-bats are particularly bad. He has worked six walks in those eight games.

It’s not that he’s seeing 20.4 pitches per game, by far the most among the Big Five.

So, what is the answer?

Since Game 6 of the 2023 NLDS, have teams begun focusing on taking the bat out of Schwarber’s hands, preferring, instead, to attack the other stars?

“Yeah, I feel like there’s a lot of quality pitches being thrown to me,” Schwarber said Monday night.

He talked with a dazed look on his face. It was the same expression he wore two nights earlier, after the Game 1 loss. Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani had struck him out twice Saturday. Power lefty Blake Snell, who has won two Cy Young Awards, fanned him once Monday, then walked him, but he whiffed against reliever Emmet Sheehan in the eighth, and that was that.

» READ MORE: Rob Thomson’s pitching decisions haunt him in another Phillies playoff loss

Schwarber believes he can hit anybody anywhere at any time; hence, the disbelief. After a blistering start in the playoffs as a young player with the Cubs, with whom he won the 2016 World Series, he’d hit a playoff slump in his next four trips, with the Cubs and Red Sox.

In Philly, after signing a $79 million free-agent contract, he’d blossomed into a playoff hero. In his first 28 playoff games with the Phillies, he hit .237, which is modest, but with a whopping 11 home runs, 21 walks, and a .990 OPS.

In the last four regular seasons, only the Yankees’ Aaron Judge has hit more home runs than Schwarber, but it’s been the playoff performances that cemented the term “Schwarbomb.”

Is he trying too hard to Schwarbomb?

Thomson thinks so. He reiterated Tuesday his assertion Monday when asked specifically about Schwarber, who, after a four-hit, two-homer game Sept. 24, finished his last four games 0-for-14 with eight strikeouts.

That’s right. In his last six games, Schwarber is 0-for-21 with 13 strikeouts.

“He’s off a little bit right now — again, trying to do a little bit too much,” Thomson said before Tuesday’s workout at Dodger Stadium. “The swings are a little bit bigger. He’s just got to slow it down. Turn the field around [and stop trying to pull pitches to right field]. Think left-center. Just stay on the ball.”

Schwarber swears that’s not the problem.

“I’m not looking to go up there and slug,” he said Monday. “I’m not looking to do that.”

In his mind, he’s making acceptable swings at tough pitches. In his mind, there’s nothing terribly wrong.

Maybe that’s why he looked so dazed and confused.