Kyle Schwarber was already having himself a fantastic professional debut, and it’s hard to call anything he does at this point “going off.” Because everything he’s done so far is “going off.”
But last night, dude was going off.
Schwarber went 4-5 with two homers and a double. His OPS for the game was a cool 3.000, and raised his OPS at Kane County to a stupid 1.556, and his overall pro OPS (14 games) to 1.723. These aren’t video game numbers, because you could not do this in any credible video game, even with your customized hybrid Kris Bryant Barry Bonds player.
Here’s the one that’ll really knock your socks off: If you cut Schwarber’s pro OPSÂ in half, it would still be 11th in the Midwest League. Don’t like the Northwest League bump he’s getting? OK. Cut his Midwest League OPS in half, and he’s still 28th(!) in the league.
Here’s video of Schwarber’s first homer, via BN’er Adam’s buddy Chris:
It looks like that pitch was a little in, but Schwarber’s hands get down and leveled off so quickly that when he hits it out, it wound up going to left center. That makes me assume the pitch couldn’t actually have been in, but it’s just kind of crazy to watch from that angle. I’m guessing the pitch was actually just out over the plate, but still nice to see Schwarber showing so much opposite field power.
Schwarber’s second homer was a grand slam later in the game, which made for awesome crowd reactions. Here’s a behind-the-plate video of the granny from BN’er Mike:
And here’s Scott with another view:
Deep … deep … deeeeeep … DEEP … DEEEEEEEEP!!!
A parting 1000 words on Kyle Schwarber: