CLEARWATER, Fla. — Tanner Banks was watching the World Baseball Classic on Saturday night when Kyle Schwarber stepped up to the plate. It was the bottom of the fifth inning, with one out and a runner on base. Team USA was tied 1-1 with Great Britain.

Pitcher Andre Scrubb threw a cutter up, which Schwarber chased for a strike. He spiked a knuckle curve in the dirt, and then threw one high and out of the zone.

Banks turned to his sister-in-law.

“It was a 1-1 pitch and he bounced it, and I’m like, ‘He’s gonna hit a homer right here,’” Banks said. “‘Dude’s going to try to get back in the count so he doesn’t go 3-1 or whatever.’

“He was right on a fastball up in the zone. I’m like, “This guy’s not getting another fastball past him.’”

Prospect Aidan Miller, watching from home in Trinity, Fla., made the same prediction.

“I called it,” he said. “I told my girlfriend before the pitch, ‘I think he’s gonna go yard right here.’ Next pitch, he hits a homer.”

Their predictions proved prescient. Scrubb threw a cutter inside, which the designated hitter promptly launched to right field. It traveled 427 feet, left his bat at 108.9 mph, and gave Team USA a 3-1 lead en route to a 9-1 rout.

“My wife came back into the room, and I was like, ‘Taylor, I literally just called Schwarber’s homer,’” Banks said.

“You could just see it in Kyle’s eyes,” added reliever Orion Kerkering. “‘Yep, there it is.’ I saw the pitch and I’m like, ‘That’s a homer.’”

To some in the Phillies clubhouse, it evoked memories of Schwarber’s titanic home runs of years past. Many players mentioned the home run he hit off of Yu Darvish in Game 1 of the 2022 NLCS in San Diego.

Schwarber took Darvish deep again a few months later, in the 2023 WBC, fouling six pitches off and then crushing a splitter 436 feet to right center.

And, of course, there was the 462-foot behemoth Schwarber hit off Chris Sale in Atlanta in April of 2024 — the longest home run Sale has given up in the Statcast era, according to MLB.

To Trea Turner, there is little distinction between the moonshots.

“They’re all the same,” he said. “They are all hit a million miles an hour.”

The shortstop said that with Schwarber, home run-predictions aren’t necessary, because he “hits 50 of them every year.” But Banks and Kerkering were still willing to indulge.

“I was like, ‘He’s gonna hit a homer right here,’” Banks said. “And that was a homer. Oh my gosh.”

“[Statcast] said 427,” Kerkering said. “I go — ‘That’s a lie.’ That went further than 427.”

“It went halfway up the second deck,” Banks said.

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