Kyle Schwarber’s last swing Thursday night was a disappointment. He’d hit four home runs, and in the eighth inning had a chance to become the first player in major league history to hit a fifth. He popped up.
By doing so, however, the Philadelphia Phillies designated hitter averted a certain controversy and cries that his accomplishment was tainted.
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Why? Because the pitcher he faced was Atlanta Braves infielder Vidal Bruján, a position player mopping up the last inning of the Phillies’ 19-4 victory at Citizens Bank Park.
Bruján lobbed a 57.4 mph pitch over the middle of the plate. Schwarber hit it straight into the air for an infield-fly rule out. Controversy averted.
By going deep in the first, fourth, fifth and seventh innings. Schwarber became the 21st player to hit four home runs in a game, an accomplishment even more rare than a perfect game, 24 of which have been pitched.
Schwarber was only the fourth player to get a chance to hit a fifth homer, joining Mike Cameron (2002), Lou Gehrig (1932) and Bobby Lowe (1894). Everyone else on the list hit their fourth home run in their last at-bat.
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“I thought he was going to do it, I really did,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson told reporters after the game. “There was no doubt in my mind.”
Schwarber was less sure. He has 333 career home runs and an MLB-leading 49 this season, but has zero home runs in 15 plate appearances against position players, against whom he is two for 10 with two walks, two hit-by-pitches and one sacrifice fly.
“I’ve got a mental block somewhere in my head that I’m not very good against position players,” Schwarber said.
His difficulty is an anomaly. Bruján has an earned-run average of 27.00 in three career pitching appearances, having given up two home runs and nine runs in three innings.
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The Dodgers have used two position players to finish games this season. Kiké Hernández has an ERA of 15.10 in 5 1/3 innings and Miguel Rojas has a 12.60 ERA in five innings, including two in a 16-0 loss to the Cubs when he had the dugout laughing by imitating his teammates.
Rojas wore Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s blue glove, wiggled the ball in it and hesitated during his windup. He imitated Clayton Kershaw, raising his glove high above his head going into the stretch. He tried to look like rookie Roki Sasaki, bending his back knee and lifting his front leg uncomfortably high before releasing the pitch.
All of which took a bit of the sting out of the Dodgers’ worst shutout loss in franchise history.
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“I guess a little bit of levity in a game like that is certainly helpful,” manager Dave Roberts said. “It just shows [Rojas] watches the games. To be able to throw two innings was huge for us, and we needed every bit of that.”
Yet the ERA of position players pitching since 2021 has been about 10.00, according to FanGraphs. Not everybody is laughing.
Read more: Roki Sasaki takes another step forward, Dodgers’ offense regresses in laugher of a loss
Why do position players find themselves on the mound? The practice is stomached by managers who want to protect their actual pitchers from overuse. It’s a way of throwing in the towel, waving the white flag, wishing for the mercy rule used in youth baseball.
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MLB has acknowledged that the prevalence of position players pitching has become a problem, with critics saying the practice makes a mockery of the game and impacts the validity of statistics — a sacred part of baseball.
As Times assistant sports editor Houston Mitchell wrote, “Might as well bring in the stilts guy from the Savannah Bananas to pitch.”
MLB responded in 2023 by implementing a rule restricting the use of position players pitching to games where a team is trailing by at least eight runs at any point, leading by 10 runs in the ninth inning, or in extra innings.
It hasn’t done much to stem the tide. Teams are on pace this season to challenge the 2022 record of 132 pitching appearances by position players. As recently as 2008, there were only three such pitching appearances and in 2006 there were none.
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So Schwarber hitting a historic fifth home run off anyone other than a legitimate pitcher would have triggered howls from purists and anyone else who believes crushing a 57.4 mph pitch into the seats is a joke.
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As it was, belting four homers was quite a feat. Schwarber is the fourth Phillies player to do so, joining Mike Schmidt (1976), Chuck Klein (1936) and Ed Delahanty (1896). He also was the third player to do so this season, joining Eugenio Suárez of the Arizona Diamondbacks and Nick Kurtz of the Athletics.
Others on the short list include the Dodgers’ Shawn Green in 2002, who in a 16-3 win over the Brewers also doubled and singled to set a record with 19 total bases.
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Schwarber got an early start with a 450-foot solo homer in the first inning and a two-run shot in the third. He added a three-run homer in the fifth and finished with another three-run blast in the seventh inning.
When it looked like he’d get one last at-bat in the eighth, Schwarber yelled out a question while hitting in the underground batting cage adjacent to the dugout.
“I shouldn’t have even asked the question, but I was like, ‘How many guys have hit five?’” Schwarber said. “And nobody said anything, so I was like, ‘Oh, OK, well that answers the question.'”
Thanks to his pop fly against Bruján, the answer remains the same: Nobody.
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And thanks to his pop fly against Bruján, nobody can complain that a cherished record was broken in a way that would have raised the ire of many.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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