A free agent after the season, Kyle Schwarber is having the best year of his career.
Schwarber leads NL with 102 RBIs and is on pace for his first 50-homer campaign.
Phillies look set for a fourth consecutive playoff appearance.
WASHINGTON — It all lies ahead of Kyle Schwarber: A bid for the National League MVP, another run at a World Series for the Philadelphia Phillies and untold free agent riches that should result in the first nine-figure contract of his decorated career.
Yet it’s easy to forget just how much he’s left behind.
Schwarber, the Philadelphia Phillies’ beloved slugger, is enjoying the best season of his 11-year career, on track for his first 50-homer season and top-10 MVP finish, perhaps the favorite if not for a two-way superstar on the other coast.
At 32, he spanks baseballs harder than almost any of his peers, and his everyman persona and ability to connect plays phenomenally well in Philadelphia. He’s almost part of the furniture in a star-studded Phillies clubhouse that regards him as their emotional pulse, and after four seasons that will net four playoff berths, he feels even more indispensable with every passing month.
Schwarber, though, has been down this road before. A 2016 World Series champion as a Chicago Cub, he was non-tendered by the club in 2020. He reclaimed his stroke in Washington, was traded to Boston, led them to the brink of the World Series and then was on the market again.
Philly, it seems, should be different. Yet Schwarber knows that once the adrenaline of October fades, and the spectacular postseason gives way to winter’s often heartless calculations, nothing is guaranteed.
“When I first came into the big leagues with the Cubs, even when you make the playoffs and win the World Series the next year you think, ‘Oh, I’m gonna be here for forever. We’re gonna be here for forever. We’ve got such a great core,’” Schwarber tells USA TODAY Sports. “And then the business side happens, right? I think as a player, you want to make an impression, a lasting impression on a fan base and an organization. And I don’t think that’s something you take lightly.
“I hope I did it in Chicago. I hope I did it in Washington and Boston, for a short amount of time. And I hope, if this is it after the year, that I did that here.
“Because you pour so much of everything you have on a daily basis into the organization, into the city, into your teammates and trying to win. You just hope that people – I don’t want to say appreciate it, because that’s what we do – but I know how much we pour in that it becomes home.”
He needn’t worry: With 38 games remaining, plus a likely fourth playoff engagement, Schwarber’s Philly impression is cemented.
He’s hit 43 home runs this season, tied with the great Shohei Ohtani atop the NL leaderboard, and with a career-best .945 OPS, has provided the most punch in this final year of his four-year, $79 million contract.
And oh, what a deal for Philly: Schwarber is the only player in major league history to hit at least 38 home runs in his first four seasons with a team. His punch helped elevate the Phillies into the playoffs every season, and electrified Broad Street in a manner not seen since the core that produced a 2008 World Series championship roamed there.
It will once again be on owner John Middleton to dig deep and retain Schwarber, who will be the second or third most-coveted bat on the market.
That’s a wonderful turnabout for Schwarber, who in 11 seasons has missed the playoffs just once – 2019, with the Cubs – but somehow finds himself on the market a third time.
The Phillies might be wise to see what happened to clubs who thought they could live without the 5-11, 230-pound designated hitter.
‘The most dominant month I’ve ever seen’
He was the youngest of that Cubs championship core, yet the first to go. Rather than pay Schwarber an estimated $8 million after a challenging 2020 season in the COVID-19 campaign, the Cubs set him free.
The move startled Cubs fans, with owner Tom Ricketts claiming “biblical losses” due to the pandemic. Yet for Schwarber, it was time to make gains.
The Nationals signed him to a one-year, $7 million deal, placing him in the hands of hitting coaches Kevin Long and Pat Roessler. And three days after Schwarber signed in January 2021, Long and Schwarber were in Florida, hitting and identifying “things causing me to be unproductive,” as Schwarber puts it.
“We started with an extreme,” he says. “But the extreme forms into something you’re more comfortable with. And you start doing it in a different way and make it your own.”
And suddenly, Schwarber found another extreme.
Come June, he bashed 16 homers in 21 games for the Nationals, who moved him to the leadoff spot and lit a fuse: Schwarber led off five games in that span with a home run.
“It was the most dominant month I think I’ve ever seen,” says Nationals first baseman Josh Bell, a teammate then.
The joyride ended as June turned to July and Schwarber suffered a significant hamstring injury. The Nationals were three games out of first yet by month’s end, sans Schwarber, were busting up their core and shipped Schwarber to Boston.
The Red Sox went 23-18 with Schwarber in the lineup, made the playoffs by a game and then Schwarber took Gerrit Cole deep in the AL wild card game and added eight more hits in their final two series, reaching the ALCS.
Naturally, Beantown took to the slugger and Schwarber embraced the “Kyle from Waltham” tag affixed to him. Yet Boston’s neverending quest for “sustainability” meant it was time to move on from a slugger built for Fenway.
They’d soon be part of what we’ll call Kyle’s Curse: The Cubs have not made the playoffs since non-tendering Schwarber. Neither have the Nationals, nor the Red Sox.
No matter. Long was moving on to Philly – and a wiser Schwarber joined him.
“I always tell people I wish what I know now I knew when I first came up,” says Schwarber. “Being able to learn off success, to learn off failure. Good, bad and indifferent, you have to be able to take something away from your day, right?
“And I think more comes off your bad days than your good. Why did I have a bad day? What pitch did I swing at? What pitch did I take – a good pitch to hit? Was I thinking what I wanted to think at the plate?’
Soon, postseason nirvana awaited.
‘It’s the purest form of baseball’
We’re now three full decades into Major League Baseball including a wild card series in its playoff format, and you’d think we’d have come to appreciate how hard this whole World Series thing is.
Such as when the back end of Atlanta’s 14-year run of division titles yielded no more than their 1995 World Series title. Or the Dodgers winning just one full-season title despite 12 straight appearances. Or this latest Braves generation winning one in seven playoff runs. Or no team repeating since the Yankees in 2000.
These Schwarber-era Phillies have seen every dimension of it: Surprise wild card pennant winners, stunned NLCS losers in 2023 and then last year’s stumble to the Mets in the NLDS.
Schwarber himself is batting .100 – one title in 10 playoff appearances. He’s hardly ashamed, and believes the Phillies can go to school on their recent shortfalls.
“Experience is key – when you’re able to have a group of guys who’ve experienced success, failure, failure within success,” he says. “Making the postseason yet feeling like you don’t get where you want to be.
“That’s experience, and that can only help. The more you’re prepared is the only thing you can ask for. It doesn’t mean it will happen. I’ve been in the postseason every year but one. Only made two World Series and won one. Made 10 or 11 appearances.
“It’s hard. I think the understatement of winning the World Series – there’s a lot of different things that calculate, that go into winning that trophy. It’s playing good, it’s doing your job, the roll goes your way. There’s so many different aspects.
“It’s the purest form of baseball – the postseason.”
One that Schwarber lives for.
“Every time I walk out of a clubhouse,” he says, “I’m expecting to win. And then you can get freaking swept. It’s just the game. Being able to see that and knowing what it takes – all the different bounces, playing good, the unexpected performances, whatever it is – that can be the difference between walking home with one and not.
“But it’s addicting. And that’s why you want to get back to that format every year. Because it’s the best form of baseball ever and it’s what I play for.
“I can’t imagine not being on a team that’s not winning. And not having a chance to be in the postseason.”
Clubhouse connection
Well, the previous sentence is pretty instructive – that should narrow the field of free agent suitors considerably come winter.
Indeed, few clubs are as committed to winning as the Phillies, who already have six players signed to nine-figure contracts, led by Bryce Harper’s $330 million pact. It’s not hard to imagine the other big dogs lurking.
Yet the L.A.s and New Yorks and Torontos can’t offer the symbiotic relationship Schwarber and his teammates enjoy.
“He’s a big-time leader on our team,” says Harper.
Phillies manager Rob Thomson indicates Schwarber’s ability to connect is indispensable.
“He’s a great person. He respects everybody. He’s a great teammate,” says Thomson. “And he’s very talented. But just the man himself, as he is, is really something.
“He’s a winner, and he’s a great person.”
For Schwarber, that mantle of leadership “means a lot” and is not to be taken lightly. He sees himself a product both of his parents and his competitive environments, from Middletown, Ohio to Indiana and then those early Cubs teams laden with veteran wisdom.
Connection, he has discovered, is a two-way interaction.
“Being able to listen is a huge aspect – to hear what you have to say and have an honest conversation,” he says. “You gotta be able to hear someone. Maybe they got something off their chest and what I said went in and out.
“Or what you said could make the difference. You never know.”
Soon enough, the Phillies will try to take it all – his 174 homers as a Phillie, his enhanced ability of late to murder left-handed pitching, his clubhouse manner – and put a value on it.
Whether the offseason is framed through a prism of post-championship glory – the Phillies hold a five-game lead over the Mets in the NL East – or October disappointment could play some factor.
Yet Harper and Trea Turner – each signed well into the next decade – are still hale afield, and Schwarber occupying DH shouldn’t hamstring the lineup for the term of the deal he receives.
Either way, Schwarber is ready.
“I feel like you pour so much effort – everything you have – into the season and then when it’s over, it’s over,” he says. “And then you take the big step back and trying to recoup from what you just left – that eight, nine months when you’re in spring training, the regular season, the postseason.
“I love this game. I’m grateful to play it. I’m going to give it everything I have on a year-in, year-out basis. And try to give my best not just to play, but to your teammates, your organization, your city. That’s all I try to do. If it gets recognized, great.
“But I’m more focused on I want to keep playing. I’ve got a lot to give still. And that’s all I can see myself doing. Until I can’t anymore.”
This post appeared first on USA TODAY
