Kyle Schwarber should hit leadoff for the Phillies (unless Bryce Harper does). It’s not debatable.

Rob Thomson will present his Opening Day lineup Thursday, and the baseball gods again will shudder.

Kyle Schwarber will bat leadoff.

Perhaps the most onerous debate regarding the Phillies this winter concerned whether Schwarber should continue to lead off, as he’s done for most of the past two seasons. Intuition screams no.

Consider: Schwarber is a slow designated hitter whose .207 batting average with the Phillies is by far the worst among players with at least 1,200 plate appearances, mainly because he led the major leagues with 415 strikeouts in those two seasons. His nine stolen bases rank second-to-last among leadoff hitters with at least 1,000 plate appearances.

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So, should Schwarber stay on top of the lineup?

The answer is, unequivocally, yes.

And yes, when I wrote that I gagged a little bit, too.

Why should he hit first?

Because he’s good at it.

Because there’s really no other option, unless Bryce Harper leads off, and he needs to stay in the three-hole.

Because, while Trea Turner has been effective as a leadoff hitter in his career — but he wasn’t good in his first Phillies season last year — he’s been just as good hitting second, and his right-handed bat breaks up lefties Schwarber and Harper.

Because Bryson Stott’s never done it, and you can’t gamble a $924 million lineup on a third-year contact hitter. Not when you’ve started 18 games in the last two seasons with Schwar-Bombs. Schwarber batting leadoff makes starting pitchers quake in their cleats.

I’ve mostly been on the other side of this debate. After a winter of reflection that led to acceptance of obvious realities, the question of whether Schwarber should hit first became a no-brainer (the sort of question for which I am best equipped).

The tangential sub-topic — should Harper lead off? — is relevant only because Harper is the team’s best hitter, and there is a school of thought that says a team’s best hitter should get the most plate appearances. Harper’s good at it, too: In his five seasons with the Phillies he’s hit leadoff in nine games, and his OPS is .951. The Phillies are fine sacrificing on-base percentage — Schwarber’s .330 OBP hitting leadoff is 10 points lower than his career OBP — for Schwarber’s power.

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Moving Schwarber out of the leadoff for anyone but Harper might push Harper into the No. 2 hole, where he has an .850 OPS with the Phils, or the No. 4 hole, where he has an .825 OPS. Why move him from third, where he has a five-year OPS of .951?

All arguments are rendered moot by these realities: Schwarber and Harper are effective hitting first and third, and they like hitting first and third. They’re making $379 million to hit, and they’re your most dangerous hitters, so as long as they’re producing, let them hit where they want to hit.

Including playoffs, Schwarber has 104 home runs in his first two seasons as a Phillie, the most home runs of anyone in the majors.

Including playoffs, Schwarber has 83 home runs as a leadoff hitter in the last two seasons, by far the most homers by a leadoff hitter in the majors.

Harper won the MVP two years ago mostly hitting third. Rob Thomson realized where their strengths lay, and Schwarber’s and Harper’s bats pushed the Phillies to the World Series in 2022 and the NLCS in 2023.

“We’ve won with that,” Thomson said.

End of discussion.

Asked if he prefers hitting third, Harper replied: “Yeah. I mean, I’ve hit two, I’ve hit four, I’ve hit five, but the three-hole is where I’ve hit most in my career. Wherever Topper puts me, I’ll hit.”

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Schwarber said the same, but his OPS in the leadoff spot is .830, significantly better than his OPS in the other top five spots in his two seasons as a Phillie. He’s excellent hitting sixth and seventh, too — 1.031 and .964, respectively — but those are small sample sizes, and if Schwarber’s hitting that low in the order, then Nick Castellanos, Trea Turner, J.T. Realmuto, and Alec Bohm all had better be having MVP seasons.

“Do I like it? I’ve done it a lot. I’ve had success. Sure, I’m comfortable there,” he said. ”For me, it’s wherever they want me to be.”

That’s where they want him to be. That’s where he should stay.

Baseball gods be damned.