Kyle Schwarber is Primed for a Breakout 2023

Kyle Schwarber had a good season in 2022. But the Philadelphia Phillies slugger shouldn't just be good in 2023, he should be great.

Author:
Ben Silver
Nov 9, 2022 12:27 PM EST

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Philadelphia Phillies

How can a player who lead the National League in home runs break out any further you might ask? How could a player who's arguably coming off the two best seasons of his career, possibly get any better?

Sure, Kyle Schwarber was a great player in 2022. He was the glue that kept the Philadelphia Phillies together. Disregarding a short stint that August in which a calf injury kept him out of the lineup for a week, Schwarber played every game for the Phillies.

Including the playoffs, of which Schwarber also played every game, the Phillies slugger hit 52 home runs in 2022.

So you ask again, how can one improve on 52 homers?

Well, that may be the one area where Schwarber doesn't improve. He may have already hit his peak there, but in just about every other statistical category besides home run-rate, walk-rate and strikeout-rate, there's room for improvement.

In 2022 Schwarber bested his career average home run-rate of 6.1%, posting 6.9%. His career strikeout-rate also increased from 27.8% all the way to 28.3%, he lead MLB in strikeouts. But his walk-rate was just as impressive. He was in the 9th percentile overall in BB% with 12.9%.

Meanwhile his average exit velocity was also the highest of his career at 93.3 mph, or 99th percentile overall in MLB.

By the most basic of metrics, the outcome of his at-bats and how hard he puts the ball in play, Schwarber should be one of the league's best hitters. And yet, among qualified players, he ranks 22nd overall out of 130, Schwarber should be higher on that list.

The issue comes from the shift and where Schwarber is putting the ball in play. Almost any ball he hits on the ground is pulled into the shift. Because of this Schwarber has a comically low career BABIP. It hovers at .268 for his eight-year career, well below the MLB average of .296.

And 2022 was even worse for Schwarber, his BABIP was .240. During a year in which Schwarber hit the ball harder than he ever had, it's counter intuitive that his BABIP would diminish.

Yet it did.

This indicates that Schwarber is due for some regression to the mean. Gambler's fallacy states that if a person is frequently unlucky, it doesn't mean they're suddenly more likely to be lucky. But Schwarber is lucky.

In 2023 MLB will ban the shift. That means no more second baseman playing right field. No more four infielders on the right side of the diamond. No more 105 mph liners through the hole turned into outs.

Not only is Schwarber improving as he ages, but the game is also changing to suit him. Now, as Schwarber's BABIP naturally improves, he'll also have the positive change of no longer having to deal with a second baseman cutting off all his pulled ground balls.

His BABIP should increase drastically in 2023, perhaps it won't be Major League average because of all the fly balls Schwarber hits, but the one time in his career it did approach that figure, he could have been an MVP candidate.

In 2021, the year before Schwarber joined the Phillies, his BABIP was .306.

That season, he slashed .266/.374/.554, his OPS+ was 149. If Schwarber can ever return to even half that kind of luck, the Phillies are in for a special season from their big slugger.