What is Schwarber's secret to a lightning quick bat?

This story was excerpted from Todd Zolecki’s Phillies Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

If you like compact, powerful swings, Kyle Schwarber has one of the best in baseball.

He looks perfectly at ease before the pitcher begins his delivery. He loosely holds his bat, almost as if it is a plastic toy. But Schwarber is ready. The pitch comes and he fires his hands through the zone at a blazing speed.

If he barrels the ball -- boom.

Schwarber’s swing came up recently in a conversation. Specifically, it must be one of the fastest swings in baseball. Coincidentally, Baseball Savant rolled out a new bat speed metric on Monday, as measured by Statcast.

Schwarber has the third-fastest swing in the Majors at 77.0 mph. Only the Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton (80.6) and Oneil Cruz (77.9) of the Pirates swing faster.

Now, before you start shaking your fist at your phone or computer and yelling, “What do I care about bat speed?! I only care about hits!” … just know that hard swings generate hard contact, and hard contact generates hits. Through last Thursday, bat speeds of 80 mph or faster generated a .321 batting average and a .665 slugging percentage. Swings in the 70-79 mph range generated a .274 average and a .477 slugging percentage. Swings slower than 70 mph generated a .202 average and a .254 slugging percentage.

Besides, can’t it just be fun to know that the eye test measures up to the data, just like it’s fun to know how far a home run flies (even though 500-foot bombs and 325-foot wall scrapers count the same) or how many times a pitcher cracks 100 mph?

Schwarber was asked Friday in Miami if bat speed is something that can be learned, or if it is a God-given ability.

“It’s more of an ability,” he said. “I’ve never done any bat-speed training or anything like that. There are things that you work on during the offseason in the weight room that can help that. But it’s not like I’m focusing on bat speed. I think you try to train to be explosive, not focus on being explosive with the hand positioning or anything like that.”

Schwarber's swing is also one of the more consistent ones, as evidenced by his fast swing rate -- or his percentage of swings that are 75 mph or faster. Schwarber's fast swing rate checks in at 73.7%, also third best in the Majors behind Stanton (98.0%) and Cruz (74.9%).

But to further put that in perspective, Schwarber’s rate is more than double that of any other Phillies player -- a shocking gap on a loaded offense that ranks third in the Majors in slugging percentage. J.T. Realmuto ranks second on the club with a 36.5% fast swing rate.

Schwarber grew up not being told to swing hard, although he remembers his father pitching basketballs at him underhanded.

“He’d throw them, and I’d hit them with the bat,” he said. “I remember one time there was a water-logged basketball and the metal bat came back and whacked me right in the head. I had to go play a game after that. I remember it was, ‘Strong wrists, strong wrists.’ But I guess as I continued to get older, I just naturally had a fast swing.”

He said he’s never had a teammate ask if there’s any secret sauce to his fast swing.

It’s probably because players generally know the trick to swinging fast.

“I think, for us, it’s just trying to be as short as we can to the baseball,” Schwarber said. “If that’s eliminating different kind of moves preemptively before the swing or anything like that, where you can get from ‘A’ to ‘B’ as efficiently as you can, that’s kind of what you look for. It’s like, ‘Why might I be missing pitches?’ That split millisecond could be the difference between fouling off a pitch and barreling one up.”