Trea Turner and Kyle Schwarber need to carry the Phillies into the All-Star break and beyond

The Phillies this season will pay Trea Turner and Kyle Schwarber a combined $46.3 million. Hopefully, by the season’s end, they’ll have earned it.

They have a long way to go. Despite modest improvements in the last few weeks, the amount of time for them to earn their keep keeps getting shorter. A handful of games remain before the All-Star break, and its centerpiece game in which they both should be playing. These games represent a timely opportunity to remind everyone just why they’re making so much money.

Turner showed at the World Baseball Classic in March that, with his combination of power and speed, he remains a special weapon. But entering Wednesday night’s game against the Rays, he had a .679 OPS, nearly 200 points lower than his OPS from 2019-22. Those were the four seasons that earned him a $300 million contract as the Phillies’ centerpiece offseason addition.

He’s even worse when he has been asked to do what he was hired to do: bat leadoff. His OPS is .652 hitting first, and his on-base percentage is .286. He has drawn three walks — three — in 63 plate appearances on top of the lineup.

This is why the Phillies now find themselves back in the purgatory that is Schwarber leading off. It’s wild. For the second straight year, the Phillies’ everyday leadoff hitter leads the National League in strikeouts; 108 entering Wednesday night. Schwarber’s batting average aside — he’s at .189 — the fact that he so often comes up empty as the player who gets the most chances is utterly crippling.

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And no, his 22 home runs do not compensate for his perpetual fan-fest. He surged for 17 games in June when he reassumed the leadoff role, with a 1.042 OPS and seven home runs, but that might have been a mirage. In the last 11 games entering Wednesday, he was hitting .178 with a .652 OPS and 18 strikeouts.

All of this is so alarming because of how Turner and Schwarber were expected to produce in 2023.

Turner, who finished among the top 11 in MVP voting the past three years, was supposed to be an MVP favorite when added to a lineup that included Schwarber, who led the league in homers last season, Bryce Harper, the 2021 MVP, and J.T. Realmuto, Turner’s All-Star teammate two years ago.

Schwarber, who hit .218 last year, was supposed to collect 20 or 30 more hits this year after MLB outlawed the shift. Yes. Well.

Worse, perhaps, is that neither of them is playing as well defensively as the Phillies hoped. Turner already has 10 errors and is on pace for 19, three worse than his career high.

Schwarber, a perennially poor fielder, is the worst version of himself. His outs above average rating, according to Baseball Savant, is minus-15, last among the 261 qualifying fielders ... by 20% (three runs). Staggering.

There are caveats, and there is hope.

Nick Castellanos sputtered for all of 2022 after he signed a five-year, $100 million deal. Maybe Turner’s trying too hard, too.

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Schwarber always has been an atrocious fielder, and never was expected to play left field every day. At most, he was expected to play about half the time in left and act as the designated hitter the rest of the time. An elbow injury only allowed Harper to DH for most of last season, and it has limited him to DH since he returned this season, but that’s going to change soon. The Phillies are expecting Harper, a right fielder, to return to the field at first base, perhaps even by the end of the break, and vacate the DH slot.

That would get Schwarber out of left. Perhaps, without the taxation of defense, Schwarber could hit, oh, .218 again.

Certainly, Turner and Schwarber aren’t the Phillies’ only issues.

Harper and Realmuto and starters Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola all have struggled to reach their expected levels of production.

But each of them has a viable explanation for his decreased contributions. Harper’s power outage — three homers in 52 games — is directly linked to his recovery from surgery. Realmuto plays too many games for a catcher. Wheeler and Nola each pitched a career-high in innings last year, and neither likes the new pitch clock.

Turner and Schwarber have no such excuses.