Sep 9, 2024; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Phillies designated hitter Kyle Schwarber (12) shakes hands with shortstop Trea Turner (7) after hitting a solo home run during the sixth inning against the Tampa Bay Rays at Citizens Bank Park. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-Imagn Images
Spring training results don't matter much. Unless one has an agenda to push.
Case in point: Trea Turner batted leadoff in the Phillies' lineup today against Atlanta, while Kyle Schwarber manned the cleanup spot. Both players hit home runs and the Phils scored eight runs in the first two innings of the game. Schwarber's HR came with runners on base.
And that's all we need to declare a potential new Turner-Harper-Bohm-Schwarber lineup configuration a success.
Graphic posted to X by @PhilliesOk, so maybe it's not that simple.
But the case for batting Schwarber leadoff often rests on similarly flawed logic. Here's a January 2024 quote from manager Rob Thomson, for example: "I don’t think anybody can argue the fact that we’ve won a lot of games with Schwarber in the leadoff spot and scored a lot of runs with him in the leadoff spot."
Thomson's statement is true, but the correlation he points out doesn't necessarily indicate causation. There is very possibly a world where the Phillies hit fewer leadoff home runs in the 2024 season but scored more runs overall. Some of the 26 solo shots Schwarber hit in '24 would undoubtedly have been home runs with men on base.
Then again, maybe the Phils gained a psychological advantage in the MLB-record 15 games where Schwarber hit a leadoff bomb.
Hey hey it's leadoff Trea pic.twitter.com/I7Lqi1pjNA
The truth is it's impossible to say whether any of the Phillies' recent seasons would have ended differently with a different leadoff hitter. Most people who take a hard look at the math conclude that lineups don't matter as much as we think they do. And the argument that Turner just looks more like a traditional leadoff guy isn't particularly compelling.
But from here, it's long past time to shake things up. Aside from the Max Kepler signing, the Phillies didn't do much to change the faces in their lineup this season. Rearranging the same faces feels like the least they can do.
