Old Blood: Phillies Re-Sign Kyle Schwarber

No player, not even Bryce Harper, has personified the Phillies’ recent run of four straight trips to the postseason more than Kyle Schwarber. Faced with the prospect of losing their signature slugger to the division rival Mets, Philadelphia instead retained Schwarber on a five-year, $150 million deal, news of which enlivened the Winter Meetings here in Orlando on Tuesday.

Schwarber, who turns 33 on March 5, hit .240/.365/.563 and led the National League with 56 home runs and 132 RBI while playing in all 162 games in 2025. He set career highs in home runs, RBI, games played, slugging percentage, wRC+ (152), and WAR (4.9). The last of those marks owed plenty to manager Rob Thomson’s limiting him to eight games in left field, where he’s a major liability, having totaled -37 FRV and -34 DRS in 2022–23. Only Shohei Ohtani took more plate appearances as a designated hitter in 2025 than Schwarber’s 687.

Schwarber’s season — which propelled him to a second-place finish in the NL MVP voting behind Ohtani (who won unanimously) — may have been a career year, but it was no fluke. Thanks to his ongoing work with hitting coach Kevin Long, who joined the Phillies just a few months before Schwarber signed his four-year, $79 million deal with them in March 2022, he has evolved from a pushover against lefties into a top threat in those matchups. From 2015–21 with the Cubs, Nationals, and Red Sox, Schwarber hit just .214/.324/.361 (86 wRC+) in 584 plate appearances against lefties, making 100 PA against them just twice and topping a 100 wRC+ against them only in the last of those seasons, during which he bounced from Washington to Boston. He has topped 200 plate appearances against lefties in all four of his seasons with the Phillies, and he was an above-average hitter against them in each of the last three. Over the past two years, his 524 plate appearances against lefties led the majors, while his 157 wRC+ (.275/.385/.547) and slugging percentage both ranked second behind Yordan Alvarez (albeit in just 247 PA). By comparison, he hit .244/.365/.525 (143 wRC+) against righties in that span.

As The Athletic’s Matt Gelb detailed in May, with Long’s help, Schwarber has overcome his fears when stepping in against the game’s best lefties. He’s taken to donning a C-Flap helmet and additional body armor for those plate appearances, and has adjusted his mindset as well as his mechanics:

Whenever Schwarber is in the cage with Long before a matchup against a tough lefty, Schwarber says the line. Be prepared to die. It must be a coincidence that few lefty hitters can match the success he’s enjoyed since adding the face guard.

“I mean, the mind’s a powerful thing, right?” Schwarber said. “You tell yourself one thing, and the next thing you know, you’re having success. But I feel there are a lot of different things, too, that went into that.”

…“It’s work,” Long said. “It’s willing yourself. It is understanding what a lefty is trying to do to you. Understanding the angles. Understanding what pitches do against lefties. He’s got a really good grasp on it. He’s shortened his swing since the time I met him to where he is now.”

Statcast’s bat-tracking data goes back only as far as the second half of 2023, but since then, Schwarber’s average swing length has decreased from 7.9 feet to 7.5 without compromising his bat speed, which averaged 77.3 mph in 2025, placing him in the 98th percentile. This past season, he hit the ball harder than ever, setting highs in average exit velocity (94.3 mph), barrel rate (20.8%), hard-hit rate (a major league-high 59.6%), xSLG (.601), and xwOBA (.414) — all good for the 98th percentile or higher — and he maximized that impact by trimming his strikeout rate to the lowest it had been since 2021 (27.2%).

The big question is whether Schwarber’s maturation as a hitter can offset the gravitational effects of the aging curve, as this contract covers his ages 33–37 seasons. ZiPS is quite pessimistic; here’s the projection supplied by Dan Szymborski:

In case you’re wondering, that projection gets Schwarber to 489 home runs (he has 340), with ZiPS estimating his odds of reaching 500 at a healthy 48%. I’ll kick the Hall of Fame chatter can down the road while pointing out that the ZiPS contract suggestion for Schwarber’s projection is just $50 million. While his actual contract was always going to be well above whatever a strict projection-based valuation suggested, this deal blows past the figures from our Top 50 Free Agents list, where Schwarber ranked sixth. Ben Clemens forecasted just a $105 million commitment over three years ($35 million AAV), while our median crowdsource estimation came in at $112 million over four years ($28 million AAV). MLB Trade Rumors expected him to sign for five years and $135 million ($27 million AAV) and noted that this deal is the biggest free agent guarantee ever for a position player entering his age-33 season or later, far surpassing the $92 million Josh Donaldson received from the Twins in 2020 — and that was for four years.

Hell, the Pirates — the Pirates! — reportedly offered Schwarber a four-year contract worth around $120 million, according to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, while the Reds (for whom Schwarber grew up rooting), Giants, Mets, Orioles, and Red Sox are among the teams known to have checked in on him. Such widespread interest was anticipated given that Schwarber is arguably the best pure hitter on the market and has a great clubhouse reputation as well. As Clemens wrote:

If you try to approximate Schwarber’s market based on the WAR projections you see above, you’re going to come up short. Teams are no dummies, and that number doesn’t do a good job of capturing Schwarber’s total value. He’s one of the best 15 or so hitters in the majors, and defensive ability matters far less when that’s the case. Someone has to play DH for every team, and Schwarber represents an upgrade for every team save the Dodgers and perhaps the Astros.

When it comes to pure offense, Schwarber is probably the best guy on the market, and if it’s not him, it’s the guy below him [Pete Alonso, no. 7 on our list]. That gives him a strong negotiating position. You can’t replicate Schwarber in the aggregate with two so-so hitters. You can’t fake a 50-homer DH. Teams might be risk-averse in the extreme these days, but there isn’t exactly a lot of risk in “will Kyle Schwarber hit next year?” The bigger risk, in fact, might be missing the best bat on the market when you’re trying to win now.

Only Schwarber’s age kept him from ranking higher on our list. Indeed, beyond the usual age-related concerns, one issue with regards to retaining him is the extent to which he’ll prevent Harper — who’s 33 years old himself and declined in the field in 2025, his second full season as a first baseman — from sliding into the DH slot down the road.

That’s just one more concern for a team that had the worst ranked defense among the 12 playoff participants this past year, and was bounced from the Division Series in four games by the Dodgers, due in part to defensive lapses. Again, though, the Phillies are already keeping their biggest defensive liability off the grass while retaining their most productive hitter, and it’s up to president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski to figure out how they can improve elsewhere. Catcher J.T. Realmuto, whose defense has declined considerably, is a free agent, and the outfield needs a significant makeover; Dombrowski is looking to find a trade partner for right fielder Nick Castellanos, who has netted just 0.8 WAR over the past four seasons and is owed $20 million in 2026, the final year of his deal. Beyond that, Ranger Suárez is a free agent, Zack Wheeler is out past Opening Day following surgery to alleviate thoracic outlet syndrome, and Aaron Nola is coming off a 6.01 ERA, so the rotation could use substantial bolstering as well.

With Schwarber in place, the Phillies have checked one item off their shopping list, perhaps the biggest one. For at least the near term, this reunion promises to be an entertaining one as he launches more baseballs into the stratosphere. To keep the Phillies in the playoff hunt, however, will take even more than that.