How Do You Measure a Kyle Schwarber?

Fully appreciating what Phillies DH Kyle Schwarber is and does as a baseball player is harder than you’d think given that he really only does one thing.

Namely, this:

Obviously, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. It’s more accurate to say that Schwarber is a distinct brand of a three-true-outcomes hitter. For his career, 49.4% of his plate appearances have ended in a strikeout, a walk, or a home run. But even among three-true-outcomes players, Schwarber is very homer-forward. Round-trippers make up a high ratio of his production, particularly among his peers who also own a batting average that hovers right around the leaguewide mark. Looking at qualified player-seasons where at least 49% of plate appearances ended in one of the three true outcomes and the player batted .255 or lower, Schwarber has three that rank in the top 10 in terms of the percentage of three true outcomes that were homers. Among that same subset of player-seasons, Schwarber has two that rank in the top six in terms of home runs per plate appearance (2025 and 2026) and four in the top 25 by home runs per hit (2022, 2023, 2025, and 2026).

So yeah, walks and strikeouts are part of Schwarber’s game, too. Hitting home runs is not the only thing he does, but it is the most prominent thing. Schwarber has always fit the three-true-outcomes profile, but he hasn’t always been the most effective or sustainable version of it. After a solid rookie season in which he posted a 131 wRC+ over 273 plate appearances, he didn’t hit that mark again until 2021. During the first half of his career Schwarber was at least somewhat more concerned with being a more complete player. For one, he used to play defense. Now he rarely dons a glove — he’s played 17 innings in left field this season with another 10 at first base — and if he ever is forced to do so with any sort of frequency, it likely means some terrible misfortune has struck Philadelphia’s outfield. On offense, the evolution of his spray chart over the years tells the story of how his approach has changed.

If you noticed your head slowly tilting toward your right shoulder once you got to 2022 and beyond, you’re not alone. Schwarber used to hit the ball to all fields. He was open to taking an up-and-away fastball and poking it into left, but as the years have gone on, he’s eschewed such pitches, preferring to wait for a more pullable pitch on the inner half. Sluggers are always trying to figure out how to hit for just enough average to support their power habit, but Schwarber figured out how to use his power to hit for a higher average.

The first change he made was signing with the Phillies, where he would get to play 81 games per year in a ballpark much more suited to lefty power than Wrigley Field, his home for the first six years of his career. Not long after getting to Philly, by way of a season split between Washington and Boston, he realized that optimizing his approach to pulling the ball in the air would not only lead to more dingers, but better batting averages, too. For example, this season he’s pulling over 55% of his balls in play (a career-high rate), but despite the predictability of his spray chart, he’s batting .452 on pulled balls, .491 on balls hit up the middle, and just .265 on balls hit the opposite way. He posted similar splits last season, with the trend becoming even more pronounced this year.

Some hitters need more variety in their batted balls to keep the defense guessing, but it’s possible to get away with stepping into the box intending to do exactly one thing, if you’re really stupid good at that one thing. And when it comes to sending baseballs on a one-way trip to the right field seats, Schwarber is that dude. He is not a jack-of-all-trades. He is the master of one. The other aspects of his game simply exist to serve or as a side effect of his power potential. And though many have attempted this approach and failed (or could only get it to work in brief bursts, see also: Joey Gallo), it’s working for Schwarber in a way that feels legitimate and has turned out to be sustainable.

But aside from merely listing his home run totals, how does one properly articulate the magnitude and full-scale impact of Schwarber’s pull power? And moreover, how do we describe how impressive it is to take that power and convert it into an overall productive hitter who’s good for a wRC+ in the neighborhood of 150?

Well first, we should acknowledge just how many pitches he’s sent packing over the years. Since 2017 (his first full season in the majors), Schwarber has hit 356 homers, second only to Aaron Judge with 381. Matt Olson sits in third place with 313.

Then there are the physical traits of these home runs. Not every one is an absolute moonshot; sometimes he is pulling his hands in on a low-and-inside breaking ball that no one has any business making contact on and looping it over the right field wall. But he still ranks well on what I’m calling the High and Far Leaderboard, which is for counting home runs with a launch angle of 35 degrees or more (high) that traveled at least 400 feet (far).

Here’s the list of players with at least 20 dating back to 2015:

Of course, far is a worthwhile metric in and of itself, so here’s the leaderboard for dingers that traveled at least 430 feet, showing everyone with at least 60 (again, from 2015 onward):

And on the topic of distance, Schwarber recently hit two home runs in the same inning that prompted John Smoltz to speculate thusly on the broadcast, “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s a record amount of distance of homers in one inning by the same guy.” Now, Smoltz was talking all-time, and we don’t have data going back that far, but I can confirm it’s the most since the start of 2015.

And one final data point to put the reach of Schwarber’s homers into context, here’s the total distance of his home runs with the Phillies, measured in Wawa Classic hoagies: 107,357.

Another feature of Schwarber’s power prowess is his ability to go on an absolute heater for a week or two at a time. Naturally, the game has no shortage of streaky hitters, so this may not feel like a particularly unique trait, but Schwarber hot streaks exist on an elite tier.

First, I looked for seven-game spans with at least six homers (spans were selected to maximize home runs while not permitting any overlapping spans). Since the start of 2007, Schwarber is tied for the second-most such heaters, with the highest average number of homers per heater.

Next, I repeated the above process looking for 14-game spans with a minimum of seven homers. Here, Schwarber’s showing isn’t quite as strong, but he is still tied for fourth.

Our final measure of a hot hitter is the multi-homer game. Since 2002, Schwarber is one of nine players with a four-homer game. Only Mookie Betts (six) has more three-homer games than Schwarber’s four — tied with Pujols and Alex Rodriguez. Schwarber is also tied for 10th with 35 two-homer games.

But perhaps the best way to really measure the effect of Schwarber’s skill set is in the reactions of those witnessing his monster dongs live and in-person.

I’ll group them by cohort. First, the outfielders.

Here’s Ryan O’Hearn, holding his glove up in futility near the outfield wall as the ball sails overhead.

Watch Acuña Jr.’s shoulders and arms go slack as he realizes he’s sprinting toward the wall in vain.

Next, we have the pitchers.

In this one, Jason Adam emits a visceral yell as the ball is still somewhere over the infield.

Here, Schwarber breaks up a no-hitter, and all Justin Wrobleski can do is begrudgingly nod in appreciation of a tater well smashed.

This one is my personal favorite. Cionel Pérez doesn’t even watch the ball leave the yard. Instead, he trudges slowly off the mound, looking for all the world like he’s going to keep walking until he mercifully plunges headlong into the Schuylkill River.

Spectators make up the final group.

First, the classic Harper reaction to a second-decker during the 2022 NLCS. If you didn’t know that it was Schwarber who inspired that GIF, now you do.

And if you’re in such a state of shock and awe that you’re not sure how to process your feelings, fistfighting a teammate in the dugout is certainly one option.

The best explanation I can muster for whatever is happening in this next one is that it’s an inside reference to a football mantra that they adapted to mean “don’t overthink it,” but to an outside observer looks unhinged.

Finally, we have the Phanatic, in character as Pharrah, doing the classic, “Stop whatever you’re doing and stand motionless while gawking at the ball’s trajectory, then break into a dance the instant it lands.”

After all this, if you still find yourself at a loss for how to appropriately capture the sentiment behind some Schwarbarian feat, consider imitating Elmo’s delivery of “The Schwarbomb!” which is cued up for you here.