Ever since Don Mattingly took over managing the Phillies (something fans ought to be very grateful to the Blue Jays for helping make happen), the team has turned things around in a huge way. Philadelphia went from towards the bottom of the standings back to keeping their heads above water in a deeply competitive National League. Throughout all the ups and downs of this season, however, one thing has been constant: Kyle Schwarber's incredible production.
Schwarber famously put together an otherworldly campaign in 2025, when he finished second only to Shohei Ohtani in NL MVP voting. Last year, he hit .240/.365/.563 with 56 home runs. Even the most diehard fans of Schwarber and the Phillies surely believed that was a career year for the veteran slugger, but he's gotten off to an even hotter start this year. Could that be enough to push him into the franchise's record books, overtaking Ryan Howard as the club's single-season home run king?
Through the team's first 49 games, Schwarber has already managed to slug a whopping 20 home runs. That sort of absurd early-season power production has lifted the spirits of fans in Citizens Bank Park and paved the way for phenomenal home run calls in the booth, but it's also putting Schwarber on track for history. A little bit of math reveals that Schwarber is currently on pace to finish the year with 66 home runs.
To put that into context, only Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire have hit more dingers in a single season across the entire sport. It goes without saying that Schwarber's current pace would completely dwarf the franchise record held by Howard, which sits at 58. Underscoring the point, however, is just how much Schwarber could slow things down and still put himself in position to compete with Howard for the franchise title.
So far this year, Schwarber has knocked one out of the park once per 2.45 games the Phillies have played. That's allowed him to build a bit of a cushion relative to Howard, and Schwarber would need a big fly every 2.9 games through the rest of the season if he's going to surpass Howard. That means he would need to essentially hit at a 56-homer pace from this point forward in order to finish the season with 59 homers.
Kyle Schwarber might be even closer to Ryan Howard's record than the numbers suggest
For a player who finished last year with 56 big flies, maintaining that pace over the Phillies' final 113 games this year already looks fairly doable. Even that might be underselling Schwarber's odds of breaking the record, however. Conventional wisdom has long suggested that hitters tend to slug more over the summer, and a 2016 article from Tony Blengino of Fangraphs supports that hypothesis, especially for ballparks in the northeast like Citizens Bank.
If Schwarber is slugging this well in the early months of the year, that means the sky is the limit for his end-of-year production. Howard himself is excellent proof of this. An MLB.com article from Larry Shenk back in September took a look at Howard's end-of-season production during his record-breaking 2006 season, when he hit nine homers in 20 days from Sept. 3-22.
That's already an impressive hot stretch, but Howard's 23 home runs after Aug. 1 and 30 long balls after the All-Star break show just how much the summer heat can help spark a power surge. Just last year, 26 of Schwarber's homers came after the All-Star break. If he can do anything like what he did in 2025, never mind what Howard pulled off down the stretch in 2006; the Phillies' single-season home run crown is as good as his.
Add us as a preferred source on Google