Home runs have niche classifications: moonshots, lasers, oppo-boppo, etc. Any slugger has a type they hit the most, but by the end of their careers, they’ve probably hit them all at least once.
A Schwar-bomb is different. It can only be hit by one player, and yes, it’s the player whose name is in the word. Kyle Schwarber has Schwar-bombed in the pre-season, the regular season, and the postseason (He’s played in every MLB postseason since 2015 but one: 2019). He’s done it for the Cubs. The Nationals. The Red Sox. He’s Schwar-bombed for America itself.
And when Schwarber was signed by the Phillies prior to the 2022 season, it was so that he would now knock his unique brand of loud, high, long, homers for them. Last night against the Padres, he did it for the 100th time.
So with career home run number 250 and Phillies home run number 100 under his belt this season, let’s skim the archives and remember a few Schwar-bombs that made some serious impact.
April 8, 2022 vs. Frankie Montas, Athletics
Schwarber’s first Phillies homer, coming off A’s opening day starter Frankie Montas, happened at very close to the earliest possible time. After the Phillies had signed both him and Nick Castellanos, stunning a fanbase that was so used to having just short of enough to contend, Schwarber got things started early with a home run in his first at-bat on opening day in 2022. That ball left the park in a hurry, sent the crowd into a frenzy, and ended in a warm hug with J.T. Realmuto back at the plate.
When Schwarber reappeared from the dugout, waving his arms to whip people from a frenzy into a frothing mass of insanity that could not be reasoned with, it was clear he had signed with the right team. He’d go on to hit six more lead-off bombs in 2022. The A’s would go on to not be a team anymore. That’s right. Kyle Schwarber hit a home run off a pitcher so hard, the team had to switch cities.
Throw in a delivery of the game ball from a skydiving Phanatic and the fact that the Phillies went on to lose in the World Series and the city was in full-on 1993 mode.
May 1, 2022 vs. Max Scherzer (2x), Mets
A lot of people are afraid of Max Scherzer. It could be the intensity, the heterochromia, or the unfazed way with which he can kill a lineup, hitter by hitter. But the trick is to step into the box knowing that he’s just a man; a man who once bunted a batting practice pitch off his own face and still shut out the Phillies for seven innings. But Kyle Schwarber wasn’t afraid of Scherzer three weeks after his first Phillies home run, even when Scherzer struck out the first five Phillies he faced on May 1, until Schwarber blasted a fastball to right field to give the Phillies a 1-0 lead in the second.
Then he came back in the fourth and rifled a Scherzer change-up to right-center to give the Phillies a 3-2 lead. You only get so many lead-taking Kyle Schwarber bombs in one game, and the Phillies lost 10-6, but not without some typical Mets drama. New York reliever Yoan Lopez hurled a pitch at Schwarber’s knees later in the game in an effort to keep him from ever homering again. “Think twice before you try to homer off a Mets pitcher ever again!” the Mets warned him, tears in their eyes.
Schwarber was naturally asked about the pitch after the game. His official response was “I really don’t give two craps.”
October 18, 2022 vs. Yu Darvish
I mean. I don’t really have to describe this one, do I? Just ask Yu Darvish to describe it to you and watch his eyes stare into the middle distance as he stops talking for a couple of days.
May 21, 2023 vs. Jameson Taillon
By late May 2023, Kyle Schwarber home runs were old news. Sure, he can put a baseball through a casino window anytime he wants. But wasn’t it about time we raised the stakes?
The Phillies were fighting their way back to .500 on May 20, as usual. It was a very weak and stupid fight that they kept losing, dropping five games straight. Each game was framed as a potential turnaround, and the Cubs were by no means an unbeatable team. Their starting pitcher Jameson Taillon proved that by letting the first three Phillies he faced reach base on two singles and a walk. Schwarber came to the plate with the bases loaded in the first and everybody was thinking the same thing: Why isn’t Trea Turner stealing more bases?!?
We had no idea the questions we’d be yelling about Turner’s output in the weeks and months that followed. But right then, all that mattered was beating the Cubs and not stretching the rough patch to six games. Schwarber understood the assignment, and crushed his first grand slam as a member of the Phillies 435 feet off Taillon as part of a six-run first. The Phillies killed the Cubs, 12-3.
Even crazier was that this game was an Aaron Nola start in which he both got an actual lead from his offense and kept the lead with his pitching.
June 9, 2023 vs. Caleb Ferguson
By this point, we’d seen Schwarber hit lead-off home runs and a grand slam, but we’d never seen him walk it off. And if Trea Turner hadn’t been hitting .241 with terrible defense after 62 games, people might have actually noticed.
Schwarber had three home runs in June already, the worst month to be pitching to Kyle Schwarber. And when he came up in the ninth inning against the Dodgers, the game locked in a 4-4 tie, everybody was praying for number four.
Dodgers pitcher Caleb Ferguson tossed him a cutter and Schwarber put it on the right-field express, which only makes one stop: the bleachers. Honestly, 389 feet seems a little short for a Schwar-bomb, but it won the game anyway, giving Schwarber his first walk-off homer as a Phillie, as well as a cooler bath from the team’s younger, wetter instigators of postgame frivolity.
September 18, 2023 vs. Michael Tonklin
This was the type of home run that you worry will make a pitcher walk off the field, return to his family, and begin a nice, quiet life of selling insurance. Fortunately, when the pitcher in question is on the Braves, you don’t have to “worry” too much.
Schwarber hit this one over the Chop House in Atlanta, which serves as both a landmark with which to measure long home runs and a reminder of how awful Atlanta and its chop are. Only five feet shorter than the 488-foot nightmare he’d hit off Yu Darvish in the 2022 NLCS, it was the second-longest home run at Truist Park, ever.
The Phillies hit five home runs in that game—including one by Johan Rojas—but Schwarber’s, being the third-longest hit in MLB that year, seemed to stand out.
October 21, 2023 vs. Zac Gallen
Before the doomed 2023 NLCS was complete, there was a long while—people forget this—in which everyone thought the Phillies were actually going to find a way to beat the 84-win Diamondbacks. Didn’t work out that way, but it’s true.
Part of the reason for all that confidence was that Kyle Schwarber hit five home runs in the NLCS last year, including this fifth one off D-backs ace Zac Gallen with the series tied 2-2. The broadcasters had just finished talking about how Gallen had settled in after a rough start and retired the last eleven Phillies batters in a row. Then Schwarber unloaded on a knuckle curve that went 461 feet at 114 mph. Gallen didn’t look so comfortable after that.
Really makes you wonder what could’ve happened if the Phillies hadn’t decided to stop hitting by the end of the series. If it had been up to me to make the choice, I would have just kept homering.
March 31, 2024 vs. Chris Sale
When the Phillies finally managed to win a game in 2024, it was in part because of Kyle Schwarber going yard off Chris Sale of the Braves in the second inning of the season’s third game. It was an absolute screaming liner out to right, and yeah, the Braves were already up 2-0, but for a minute, it felt like the worst thing ever wasn’t happening.
And because of Schwarber’s lead-off homer, and a few other factors, the Phillies were not swept by the Braves to start the season; something that would have, shockingly, not been handled with great mental or emotional strength by the city of Philadelphia.
April 26, 2024 vs. Joe Musgrove
And last night as Joe Musgrove threw the Phillies batting practice, Schwarber nailed one to right center in the game’s first at-bat. All San Diego outfielder Fernando Tatis, Jr. could do was frantically chase and watch the ball leave the stadium. That’s typically the only defensive response to a Schwar-bomb; that and just pretending to look at your glove.
Kyle Schwarber has hit 100 Schwar-bombs for the Phillies. After he hits 22 more, he’ll have hit more homers for the Phillies than for any other franchise for which he has played (he hit 121 with the Cubs).
Four of his seven home runs so far this year have been of the lead-off variety.
Every slugger as a type.
