CLEVELAND — Kyle Schwarber made it look pretty easy.
It wasn’t easy. What Kyle Schwarber did in Game 1 of the World Series was difficult. Stupid difficult. But Kyle Schwarber made it look pretty easy.
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He hadn’t played in a big league game since April 7 — you’ve heard that mentioned a thousand times in the past couple days, no doubt — and then he had to step into the box against arguably the best starting pitcher in the American League, Corey Kluber. After Kluber, he had to step into the box, twice, against arguably the best reliever in all of baseball, nasty lefty Andrew Miller.
Cubs manager Joe Maddon knew it was very possible Schwarber would have to face both of those guys, and he put him in the lineup anyway. That’s the confidence he has in the left-handed slugger who was the No. 4 overall pick out of Indiana in the 2014 MLB Draft.
“He's missed the entire year physically, but he has not missed the entire year mentally,” Maddon said after his Cubs lost 6-0 in the opener Tuesday. “He's been doing everything. He's been to all the meetings, the pitcher-catcher meetings. He's been studying video all year. He looks at data. He does everything that we always do when we're at home.”
BOX SCORE: Full stats and more from Game 1
In his second at-bat against Kluber, he missed a home run by a couple of feet, instead settling for a double off the wall. Schwarber was the 14th Cubs hitter Kluber had faced at the point in the game, and the Cleveland starter had allowed only two hits and struck out eight. Schwarber almost knocked the ball out of the park; in 18 1/3 innings in the first two rounds of the playoffs, Kluber only allowed one home run.
When Schwarber came to the plate against Miller in the seventh inning, the Cubs a runner on first and no outs. Cleveland manager Terry Francona brought Miller in just to face Schwarber, and Schwarber worked a walk.
Let’s find a little perspective from the stats page. Miller faced 25 hitters in the ALCS and didn’t walk any of them en route to the series MVP award. In the regular season, Miller faced 74 left-handed hitters. He walked only one of them.
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Schwarber, in his third big-league at-bat since April 7, earned a walk off Miller. It’s not easy to lay off Miller’s offerings, which hang over the plate but disappear like a wiffle ball. Before the game, he talked about the work he put in during his couple days in the Arizona Fall League.
“I tracked probably about 1,300 pitches off a pitching machine,” he said. “That's as much as we can get to a live game, besides playing in the Fall League for those two games and facing some live pitchers. So I tried to set it to the nastiest setting that I could to where it would be a really sharp break just to train my eyes all over again.”
So when Schwarber faced Miller again in the eighth inning, with two on and two outs, it almost felt like fate that the Cubs slugger would continue to author his remarkable comeback story. He worked the count in his favor, at 2-1, by laying off a nasty breaking ball just outside.
But like we said earlier, trying to hit Miller is not easy. Especially for a left-hander. Schwarber took two mighty hacks at the next two pitches but missed both. Hitting against Miller is not easy.
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"He didn't show any rust, did he?" Miller said after the game. "You hope that somebody like that, maybe he's trying to cheat for balls or guess or something like that, but his first at-bat was really good, and I was fortunate to make some pitches on him the second time. I don't think we can write him off as somebody who's rustsy or not ready to play. It's impressive."
Schwarber finished his night by reaching base twice in four plate appearances, all against Kluber and Miller.
Even though the Cubs lost the game, they had to be pretty encouraged by what they saw from the youngster in Game 1.
Sporting News MLB writer Jesse Spector contributed to this report.
