It's that time of year when we take one last reflection back at the 2024 season and look for some of the positives. There's no denying that the Philadelphia Phillies' season ended on a sour note, getting booted from the NLDS by the New York Mets in four games, but there were still some cool things that happened over the course of the regular season.
One of the things we like to marvel at is how hard some of MLB's top hitters can impact the baseball. Season after season, Phillies designated hitter Kyle Schwarber ranks among the league's hardest hitters in terms of exit velocity. He finished with the eighth-highest average exit velocity this year, at 93.6 mph.
Counting down the Phillies' 5 hardest hits of the 2024 season
While he had to share last year's Phillies list of the hardest-bit balls with Bryce Harper, this year he owns the rankings.
Let's countdown the hardest-hit balls of 2024.
No. 5: Kyle Schwarber, 114.4 mph
We actually have a tie for the Phillies' fifth hardest-hit ball this past season. Schwarber had an exit velocity of 114.4 on two separate occasions. The first came early in the season, during the first series of the year on March 31 versus the Atlanta Braves. Schwarber lined (at a 19-degree launch angle) Chris Sale's second pitch of the game over the right field wall at Citizens Bank Park.
The second, which came five months later, was a little more dramatic. After rookie Tyler Phillips got rocked and the Phillies went down 6-1 in the first inning on Sept. 3 against the Toronto Blue Jays, the Phillies battled back to a one-run deficit by the ninth inning. That's when Schwarber came up in the top of the ninth with two on and the Phillies trailing 8-7. On the ninth pitch of the at-bat, he demolished a Chad Green fastball 426 feet to right field, completing an epic comeback for the 10-9 win.
No. 4: Kyle Schwarber, 114.9 mph
The Phillies kicked off a 10-game West Coast road trip to start August, beginning with a three-game series in Seattle against the Mariners. In the Sunday afternoon finale, on Aug. 4, with the Phillies having already dropped the first two games, Schwarber said enough is enough.
He got into a 2-0 count in the first at-bat of the game before blasting a Logan Gilbert fastball 428 feet to right field. At a 23-degree launch angle and 114.9 mph off the bat, this was another Schwarber no-doubt special. The Phillies cruised to a 6-0 win behind one of Schwarber's record 15 leadoff home runs on the year.
No. 3: Kyle Schwarber, 115.1 mph
Fresh off the series in Toronto, the Phillies opened a four-game set in Miami against the Marlins on Sept. 5. Facing righty Adam Oller in the third inning, Schwarber laced a fastball at the top of the zone into the right field corner at 115.1 mph. It only went 280 feet, but did so in a hurry. Schwarber himself had to hurry to get to second for the double. The Phillies went on to win the game 5-2.
No. 2: Kyle Schwarber, 115.2 mph
Schwarber's second-hardest hit ball of the year is the least flashy of the bunch. On a dreary grey day in St. Louis, he smashed a 115.2 mph single through the right side of the infield. At a seven-degree launch angle, it only traveled 131 feet in the air. It didn't result in the Phillies scoring, but they already had the lead and hung on to win 4-3.
No. 1: Kyle Schwarber, 115.6 mph
Schwarber's hardest hit of the season, and the Phillies' hardest hit of the season, came in the series opener against the Los Angeles Dodgers on July 9, in his first game back from a short stint on the IL. With the Phillies up 1-0 in the second inning, Schwarber came up with runners on second and third and two out. He pounded a 1-1 slider from Bobby Miller into right-center at 115.6 mph.
The good news is that the clutch liner got the job done, scoring both runners to put the Phillies up 3-0. The bad news is that he hit it so hard he couldn't make it to second base safely and was tagged out, registering just a single on the play. In the end, it didn't matter, as the Phillies laughed their way to a 10-1 shellacking of their National League rivals.
The 115.6 mph single tied Schwarber with the Los Angeles Angels' Jo Adell and the San Diego Padres' Manny Machado for the 16th hardest-hit ball of the MLB season.