Schwarbombs to the rescue: Kyle Schwarber breaks through with two homers to help Phillies force Game 4

LOS ANGELES — Seventeen years ago, in this very ballpark, when the Phillies needed it most, a muscle-bound slugger with a short left-handed stroke ripped one into the night and changed a playoff series.

Did Kyle Schwarber do an uncanny Matt Stairs impression, or what?

It depends, of course, on whether the Phillies can come all the way back and win this National League Division Series after dropping the first two games at home. But they could win only Game 3 Wednesday night to extend the season by another day, and Schwarber supplied the biggest swing — and maybe swung the momentum, too — in an 8-2 thumping of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

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“That’s one of the biggest swings you could possibly have,” Bryce Harper said, laughing on his way out of the visiting clubhouse here. “He almost hit that ball to the moon. Can that swing something? I don’t know. We’ve just got to come in and do our job [Thursday]. That’s a really good team. We know that. We’re a damn good team, too.”

Schwarber hit two homers in Game 3, but it was the first one that might end up alongside Stairs’ blast in the 2008 NL Championship Series in Phillies lore.

To recap: With the Phillies trailing by one run in the fourth inning, Schwarber teed off on a 96-mph fastball from Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Schwarber dropped his bat. Yamamoto let out a scream.

And suddenly, the Phillies had life.

It’s amazing what a 117.2-mph, 455-foot Schwarbomb — his first of two homers in the game — will do.

“When I hit it, I know it’s a home run,” said Schwarber, now third on the all-time list with 23 playoff dingers. “I didn’t even see where it landed. I was looking in the dugout trying to get the guys going. I knew I hit it good. I didn’t know where it went.

“Eventually somebody tells me. You watch it on video where it goes. I don’t care. It could go in the first row, it could hit the freakin’ board right there. I don’t care. Hits are great, homers are great, walks are great, anything positive for our offense is going to be great. But yeah, it was a cool moment.”

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There were other factors that went into a season-saving victory. Rob Thomson’s pitching gambit paid off, with Aaron Nola getting six outs before Ranger Suárez got the next 15, including three big ones in the seventh inning so the Phillies didn’t have to put a two-run lead in the unsteady hands of their bullpen.

For only the second time in nine postseason games dating to Game 6 of the 2023 NLCS, the Phillies busted out for more than three runs. They broke it open with five runs in the eighth inning against future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw, as the Dodgers tried to save their bullpen for Game 4.

But let’s face it: Schwarber was the story.

The Dodgers came after Schwarber in the first two games, challenging him with fastballs. Schwarber was nevertheless 0-for-7 with five strikeouts. And when he grounded out in the first inning, his postseason slumber grew to 3-for-29 since Game 6 of the 2023 NLCS, including 0-for-19.

Schwarber led off the fourth inning and laid off two pitches out of the zone. Yamamoto tried to elevate a heater, but didn’t get it high enough.

For the record, it was the second-hardest homer of his career, according to Statcast. Only his famous moonshot to the third deck in San Diego in Game 1 of the 2022 NLCS was hit harder (119.7 mph).

It was also the longest homer hit at Dodger Stadium this season, according to Statcast.

“We were missing the slug, missing the homer,” Trea Turner said. “And no better person to do it than him.”

Said Harper: “We were all waiting for a homer, right? We were all waiting for somebody to do it. We’re built on that. It’s the type of team we are: extra-base hits, homers, big swings. And we haven’t done that.”

It’s too soon to declare that Schwarber’s blast turned the series, especially with a quick turnaround Thursday for Game 4 at 6:08 p.m. Eastern time. The Phillies will have neither Nola nor Suárez available, but they will have the pitching advantage, with Cristopher Sánchez opposing Dodgers righty Tyler Glasnow.

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And the odds are still against them. Entering this year’s postseason, only 10 of the 90 teams that fell behind 0-2 in a five-game series came back to win it.

Suddenly, though, you don’t have to squint to at least see the series returning to Citizens Bank Park for Game 5 on Saturday night.

Thomson met with the team before Game 3. He was the Yankees’ bench coach in 2017 when New York became the most recent team to overcome an 0-2 deficit in a best-of-five series. He kept it brief. His message was simple.

“Don’t try harder,” Thomson said. “Trust harder.”

As Turner recalled Thomson saying: “Go 1-0 today and get to tomorrow.”

In that spirit, Thomson devised a Game 3 pitching strategy that, at first blush, seemed illogical. He started Nola, whose clutch playoff track record belied a career-worst season, and had him face eight batters, nearly once through the order, before yielding to Suárez.

To Thomson, it was the best way to mitigate the Phillies’ rickety bridge from the starting pitcher to closer Jhoan Duran. Through two games, the Dodgers exposed that weakness, scoring all nine of their runs in the sixth and seventh innings.

“If we could get a bunch of innings between Noles and Ranger,” Thomson said before the game, “and get closer to Duran, not that I don’t have confidence in the other guys, but it helps, sure.”

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Sure enough, Nola got the first six outs, sidestepping a two-on, two-out jam in the first inning before tossing a spotless second.

“Who knows how that game goes if they score a run or two that first inning and grab early momentum?” catcher J.T. Realmuto said. “That was huge for him to get out of that spot.”

Thomson reflexively followed the pregame script — one batter too soon, as it turned out. Rather than sticking with Nola to face No. 9 hitter Tommy Edman, who was 1-for-20 against him, Thomson brought in Suárez to begin the third inning. Edman hit the first pitch — a hung curveball — into the left-field bleachers to give the Dodgers a 1-0 lead.

Otherwise, the Nola-Suárez plan worked perfectly. Because when the seventh inning rolled around, it was Suárez — not David Robertson, or Matt Strahm, or Orion Kerkering — on the mound with the Phillies clutching a two-run lead.

But there was another part of the equation. The Phillies had to actually get a lead against Yamamoto.

They did so by taking advantage of a Dodgers miscue. Harper followed Schwarber’s game-tying homer with a single, then went first to third on Alec Bohm’s single. The aggressive baserunning forced center fielder Andy Pages’ throw to third. It skipped into the dugout, enabling Harper to score and Bohm to take third base.

One batter later, Bohm scored on a sacrifice fly for a 3-1 lead and, at last, an exhale from the Phillies’ dugout.

“It’s a really hard throw to make in any game,” Harper said. “Just trying to go first to third there and make something happen. Was able to do that.”

But Schwarber started it all.

Maybe he started something even bigger.

“One swing can lift the weight of the world off a team, and that’s what Schwarber’s swing did,” Realmuto said. “That one swing’s not going to win us the series, obviously. But that swing kind of felt our mojo come back. And in a short series like this, with two teams that are as closely matched as we are with the Dodgers, it’s all about momentum and who’s confident at the time.”