None of Schwarber’s teams has known quite where to put him. He has made between 100 and 125 starts at four different spots in the order: first, second, fifth and sixth. He said he had never led off until college, at Indiana University, and then only briefly. The Cubs tried him there twice as a rookie, in 2015, and more regularly two years later.
“My first go-round with it, I was fighting that conception of what the leadoff spot is and what you’re supposed to be, besides making it your own,” Schwarber said. “You don’t have to have that prototypical speed — not speed; yeah, I’m fast — but you don’t have to be that prototypical try-to-work-a-walk, or something like that. For me, I can do that already, so why would I try to force that besides just going up there and trying to take my at-bat?”
The leadoff hitter, after all, is only guaranteed to bat first in one inning. In a stacked lineup like Boston’s, the No. 1 hitter is often in position to drive in runs. In the second inning of Game 3, teammates took turns seeing pitches and drawing walks, bringing up Schwarber with a 2-0 lead and the bases loaded against Jose Urquidy, who started him with three balls.
Schwarber rarely swings with a 3-0 count; in his regular-season career, he has faced 89 pitches in that count and gone 0 for 7 with 82 walks. But plate discipline, he explained, is not about working walks but aggressively seeking strikes to punish. And when Urquidy fired a fastball down the middle, Schwarber was not about to take it.