The Phillies have checked the biggest item off of their offseason to-do list, as they have ensured that Kyle Schwarber will be back in Philadelphia for 2026 and beyond. There still is a lot of work to do, namely answering the J.T. Realmuto question and remaking the outfield, but retaining Schwarber or finding a replacement was their highest priority, and now that’s done. Because of that, the team can start to focus on more relatively minor questions regarding the roster.
One such item would be where
to bat Schwarber in the lineup in relation to Bryce Harper. Much has been made this offseason about Harper seeing the least amount of pitches in the zone of any qualified hitter in MLB. Harper almost exclusively hit third in 2025 and the Phillies hitters who hit fourth, primarily Alec Bohm, Nick Castellanos, and Realmuto, hit a combined .240 with a .720 OPS. Both of those marks ranked 20th in baseball among all groups of cleanup hitters.
Those numbers however also include 37 games where Schwarber hit cleanup. In those games, Schwarber hit .277 with a .955 OPS and hit 10 of his 56 home runs. But all of those games for Schwarber came before the end of June, as Schwarber primarily hit second this season, one spot ahead of Harper.
Of course, the reason why the Phillies and manager Rob Thomson were reluctant to move Schwarber around was he had the best season of his career while hitting second and ahead of Harper. As the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But this is an offseason where change is needed, even if most of the roster will almost certainly look the same outside of a few spots.
Lineup protection is an abstract concept at best, but it’s not hard to at least entertain the idea that a small part of Schwarber’s success may have been due to Harper hitting behind him. Pitchers may have felt the need to give Schwarber more pitches to hit with the threat of Harper behind him. By the same theory, the same pitchers may have felt the need to throw Harper less pitches to hit because there was less of a threat behind him. Now, do the Phillies look to use the same concept to help Harper get jumpstarted by having Schwarber behind him?
It’s admittedly a minor discussion to have this early in the offseason with so much of the lineup still in flux. But it is a discussion that will grow in importance the closer we get to the season. So now that Schwarber is locked in, should he hit before or after Bryce Harper?
