After his first season in professional baseball, Philadelphia Phillies prospect Dante Nori will be putting in the work this offseason to prepare to climb the farm system ranks in 2026. He'll have some help from a very experienced friend, free agent Kyle Schwarber.
Nori, the Phillies' No. 1 pick in the 2024 MLB Draft, joined the The Phillies Show podcast with Todd Zolecki and Jim Salisbury recently and discussed a range of topics. One of those topics was his annual offseason work with Schwarber.
Nori and Schwarber go way back and their relationship has been well-documented. To catch you up, they've known each other since Schwarber's freshman year at Indiana University, where Nori’s grandfather was an assistant baseball coach who recruited Schwarber. They've known each other since Nori was seven or eight years old.
Free agent Kyle Schwarber will be helping Phillies prospect Dante Nori again this offseason
Schwarber has been helping the young Phillies prospect get his career on track, spending some time training together in the offseasons. Even if the slugger ultimately leaves for a new team this winter, he'll still be seeing Nori for some work in the cage.
"We've done I think two or three years now that I've gone down there," Nori told Zolecki and Salisbury about training with Schwarber. "This was the first time he had his house all built and got to use that facility. We'll definitely head down there sometime this offseason and get back together for sure."
Nori, who is just completing his first season of pro ball, has a wildly different game than the National League home run king. The Phillies' No. 6 MLB Pipeline prospect is a contact hitter with blazing speed, which he put to use swiping 52 bases in 125 games this season.
Dante Nori -- the @Phillies No. 6 prospect -- notches three knocks for Surprise in the @MLBazFallLeague! pic.twitter.com/9dyb42de2O
— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) October 25, 2025
Despite the differences in their styles of play, Nori still considers the 11-year veteran Schwarber a mentor.
"Just watching the way he works, some of the drills he does, the way he thinks about hitting," Nori said about what he gets from his relationship with Schwarber. "I know it's two different game types. His is a long ball, mine's on base for stealing bags. But just getting his mental side and how he thinks the game. Definitely I'd say he's a mentor to me."
While Nori doesn't have much home run power in his bat, it's one of the areas he's working on. He hit just four home runs this season, so who better to help with that than Schwarber?
In the final year of his contract, the Phillies designated hitter smashed a career-high 56 homers this year and has been one of the most prolific home run hitters in baseball over his four-year tenure with the Phillies.
Nori understands why Schwarber has become such a feared slugger, based on his work ethic.
"His work ethic is unmatched," Nori said. "He puts it down for a little bit after the season, it's 160-some games, so he definitely puts it down, but as soon as he picks back up, it's full go and he's working on stuff every single day. ... He works on some new stuff every single day. ... His ethic is unmatched from what I've seen."
Nori had a slow start in Single-A Clearwater this season, hitting .235 with a .611 OPS over the first two months of the season. He made some adjustments at the plate and picked things up for the remainder of the season. He finished the regular season batting .261 with a .732 OPS with 18 doubles, 12 triples and 47 RBIs.
He received a late-season promotion to High-A and then spent a week at Double-A to wrap things up.Nori's now playing in the Arizona Fall League after returning from a two-week injury. As he looks to continue advancing through the system in 2026, hopefully Schwarber's tutelage will help.