Former Hoosier Kyle Schwarber Ties MLB Record With 5-Homer Weekend
It's never a surprise to see Kyle Schwarber go off on an occasional power streak, but what he did over the weekend put him in the record books after he hit five home runs over a two-day period.
Schwarber, who's in his first year with the Washington Nationals after six seasons with the Chicago Cubs, tied a major-league record by hitting two home runs on Saturday in a 6-2 win over the New York Mets, and then hit three more in Sunday's 5-2 win. The five homers over a two-game stretch tied a major-league record held by many. (For highlights of all three homers, CLICK HERE)
Schwarber has been on a tear lately, and he's now hit nine home runs in the past 10 games. The Nationals have gone 8-2 during that stretch, raising their record to 33-36 after a slow start, and slowly working their way back into the National League East race.
"To be honest with you, I don't really know what's going on,'' Schwarber said Sunday. "I've said before, the consistent work in the cage has been a big thing and I think overall, just being comfortable at the plate, that's been a big contibutor.
"I'm not going up there trying to hit home runs. I've got a guy on second base, and I'm just trying to drive him in. One ball hits the top of the fence and goes out, so there's a little luck involved. I'm happy to get the job done, and get a win at the end of the day.''
For the year, Schwarber is hitting .241 with a team-leading 18 home runs and 42 RBIs. The hot streak has come from finally getting comfortable as the season rolls into the summer.
"When you step in the box and everything feels right, you've already got a big advantage. It's just a matter of trusting everything else, and that's what I've been doing, just trusting and not trying to do too much, and I don't want to expand the zone. You take a walk and you pass it on to the next guy.''
That approach as a leadoff hitter has helped, too. Nationals manager Dave Martinez moved the left-handed hitting Schwarber into the leadoff spot against right-handers a few weeks ago, and the hot streak has followed.
That's not an uncommon role for Schwarber, who batted leadoff off and on for the Cubs when Joe Maddon was his manager.
The Nationals were eight games under .500 at the time of the move to the top of the order. In the 10 games since, Schwarber has those nine homers and has driven in 16 of the Nationals’ 35 runs in that span. Schwarber led off the first Sunday with a homer. He homered again in the fifth, then again, this time to left-center, in the seventh.
“He lifted up his team tremendously,” said Martinez, who chuckled at the notion that his lineup adjustment made the difference..
“This is a good team. I don’t know what to tell you; this is a good team,” Schwarber said. “This is why I want to be here. This is why I wanted to come here. I knew this is a great team.”
Schwarber's three-home run game was the first by a Nationals hitter since 2017. Schwarber, a Middletown, Ohio, native, played college baseball at Indiana from 2012 to 2014, and he led the Hoosiers to their lone College World Series appearance in 2013.
He signed with the Nationals in the offseason after the Cubs moved on from him after six seasons. A year ago, he hit just .188 for the Cubs and struggled throughout the COVID-shortened 60-game season. He's already exceeded his numbers for a year ago, when he hit just 11 homers and had only 24 RBIs in 59 games.
“I’m a big believer in that hitting is a feeling,” Schwarber said after Washington picked up its ninth win in 12 games. “Don’t get me wrong, there’s mechanics, there’s approach, things like that. But when you step in the box and everything feels right, you’ve already got a big advantage. It’s just a matter of trusting everything else, and that’s what I’ve been doing.”
Even his opponents have noticed.
"When you're swinging the bat like that, that feeling is there's nothing they can throw that will fool you,” Mets manager Luis Rojas said. “You're going to take some nasty pitches, and he did that today. He's just been swinging a really hot bat. He's going through a special time."
MONDAY UPDATE: Schwarber was named the National League's Player of the Week on Monday. He went 10-for-26 (.385) with a .414 on-base percentage, a 1.077 slugging percentage and a 1.491 OPS in seven games this week. He hit safely in six of the seven games.
Thanks to his surge this week, Schwarber now ranks third in the National League with 18 home runs, eighth in slugging percentage (.518) and 12th in OPS (.843). His four leadoff home runs are tied for the second-most in Major League Baseball despite him having only 10 games from the leadoff spot.
This is Schwarber’s first career Player of the Week Award. It is the first award taken home by a Nationals player in 2021, and the first since Anthony Rendon won Player of the Month in Aug. 2019.