The Kyle Schwarber injury is just the latest obstacle for the resilient and red-hot Phillies

Losing Schwarber for an extended period of time would be a blow, but this team has seen similar peaks, and shown the ability to scale them.

Kyle Schwarber is likely to miss the Mets series with a strained right calf.Read moreYONG KIM / Staff Photographer

by David Murphy | Columnist

Published Aug. 12, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

The latest mountain to climb arose from the first-base line in the bottom of the fifth inning. Kyle Schwarber took ball four, took his base, and then promptly took a seat. Replaced by a pinch-runner, he spoke a few words to Phillies interim manager Rob Thomson in the dugout, shook his head, and then disappeared into the tunnel. With that, a pleasant August afternoon suddenly darkened.

The official diagnosis was a “mild” right calf strain, but the historical record will show that there is rarely such a thing. After the Phillies’ 3-0 loss to the Marlins on Thursday, Thomson labeled his star slugger “day-to-day” and did not rule out the possibility of Schwarber returning at some point during this weekend’s series against the first-place Mets. That being said, calves are notoriously difficult muscles to treat. Once they reach the point of being strained, the only option is to rest and wait, often for a time period that numbers in weeks rather than days.

Two months ago, that would have sounded a lot more daunting than it does right now. But the Phillies have risen from the ashes enough times now that we should probably assume that they are not actually dead. That’s a difficult thing to do, given the innate psychological defense mechanisms that every true Phillies fan has developed over time. But everything that we’ve seen over the last couple of months suggests that there is something different about this team.

“We’ve been playing great baseball for the last how many months?” Schwarber said. “Just because one guy is down, it doesn’t mean [anything]. We’ve shown that. Everyone steps up. It’s going to be the same kind of thing here. Even though I can’t play [Friday], I’m sure somebody is going to step up or make a big play or have a great at-bat.”

You saw it when they were 22-29 and fired their manager. You saw it when they lost Bryce Harper to a broken thumb. You saw it when they got swept by the Cubs a couple of weeks ago. You saw it on Wednesday night, when the Phillies won their seventh straight game and 12th in 13 by scoring three runs in the bottom of the eighth inning against an elite starting pitcher who spent the first seven frames shutting them down.

And, yeah, you even saw it on Thursday, despite a shutout loss that snapped their winning streak and left their one-game wild-card lead in peril. You saw it in the first inning, when Kyle Gibson and his suddenly sturdy infield defense wiggled out of a bases-loaded, no-out situation without allowing a run. You saw it in the ninth inning, when Jean Segura dropped his bat and flexed his arms and barked toward the home dugout after his ninth-inning walk loaded the bases with nobody out and brought the potential winning run to the plate. You heard it in the elongated, octave-climbing “Raaaaaaa ...” from the home crowd as a soft liner sliced off the bat of Eduardo Sosa and dropped toward the vacant grass in shallow right field, and you heard it in the instinctive “Ahhhhhhhh” as the ball landed on the wrong side of the foul line.

It’s been a long time since you could say this about the Phillies, but they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt.

“Today, they fought, and fought, and fought right until the end,” Thomson said. “Resiliency on stepping up and picking each other up, and also throughout the course of the game, just staying in the game, keep grinding, keep battling. These guys are doing that.”

Make no mistake, losing Schwarber for any amount of time is a blow. Losing him for several weeks would be a huge one. Everyone seems to forget that this team’s renaissance actually began the day before Joe Girardi was fired, with a two-run home run by Schwarber in the bottom of the sixth inning that proved to be the decisive blow in a 6-5 win over the Giants. Since that day, the Phillies are 40-20 and Schwarber has an .890 OPS and 23 home runs. Over the course of those 72 days, he has taken exactly two games off.

“I always pride myself on trying to be out there every single day,” said Schwarber, whose 34 home runs lead the National League. “For something like this to come out of nowhere really and act up, it’s definitely frustrating, but I’ve just got to be able to take care of it.”

Schwarber said he’d been dealing with soreness in the muscle for the past few weeks before feeling it tighten during the first few innings on Thursday afternoon. By the time he got to the plate in the fifth inning, he realized that he would not be able to return to the field.

“I told him not to run,” Thomson said of the final at-bat. “So he walked.”

After Thursday’s game, Schwarber was in wait-and-see mode.

“I want to be back as quick as I can,” he said, “but I also don’t want to do anything that’s outrageous to hurt the team and also be down for an extended amount of time. Obviously, we had a great homestand, we’ve got a big series coming up, but I’ve got to be smart about it as well.”

They don’t have much cushion. At the start of the day on Thursday, they held a two-game lead on the fourth runner-up in a league where only three wild cards make the postseason. Harper’s return seems unlikely to happen before September. The loss of Schwarber’s bat is massive — you saw that in the ninth inning on Thursday, when his spot in the lineup came up with the bases loaded and two out. His replacement, center fielder Brandon Marsh, grounded out to end the game.

It’s a mountain, no doubt. But however high it turns out to be, the Phillies have seen similar peaks, and they’ve consistently shown the ability to scale them.