I live in this city and I cannot believe what you people are sleeping on. Kyle Schwarber hit his 28th home run of the season last night (MLB-leading, in case that detail somehow escaped the scroll) and he did it by hitting three of them in one game, a 15-3 dismemberment of the New York Mets at Citizens Bank Park, and this morning the conversation is about the NBA Finals. I get it. I do. But I need you to stop for thirty seconds.
He had 20 home runs through his first 49 games. That projects to 66 for the season. Sixty-six home runs. I want to be very clear about what that number means.
The single-season home run all-time list goes: Barry Bonds (73), Mark McGwire (70), Sammy Sosa (66). That’s it. That’s the neighborhood. Those are Schwarber’s three nearest neighbors on the list he is currently on pace to join, and every one of them arrived at their number with a set of circumstances that required, at minimum, congressional testimony to fully explain. Aaron Judge hit 62 in 2022 and it felt like the most legitimate record in baseball because everything above it exists in a kind of asterisked amber. Schwarber is on pace to walk past Judge and knock on the door of the guys who hit their numbers in 1998, when baseballs and bodies were both doing things they shouldn’t have been doing.
He is 33 years old. He is from Middletown, Ohio. He looks like a man who runs a landscaping company and coaches youth football on weekends. He rounds the bases after obliterating a baseball 456 feet into the second deck and he looks faintly annoyed that the inning isn’t over yet.
https://x.com/MLB/status/2067035707122610431
Last night he hit the 456-footer in the third inning off the Mets starter. Then, in the same inning, he hit a 457-foot three-run shot off a reliever, two home runs of 450-plus feet in one inning, which has apparently never happened before. Then he went to the seventh inning and hit number 28 for good measure. He finished 4-for-5 with 6 RBIs and 4 runs scored. Bryce Harper hit for the cycle in the same game, the first cycle in his career and the 11th in Phillies franchise history, and somehow that was the SECOND most interesting thing that happened. Schwarber and Harper combined for a three-homer game and a cycle in the same night, something only Lou Gehrig and Tony Lazzeri had ever done before (June 1932, if you want to feel things).
We were already writing about his Bonds-level pace in May, and the numbers have only accelerated since. He hit 7 home runs in 7 consecutive games recently, in a stretch people briefly called “Schwarberfest” before pivoting back to the NBA. He is only the 18th player in MLB history with 20 or more home runs through 49 games. The last one was Josh Hamilton in 2012. His career home run rate (6.4% of plate appearances) is fourth all-time among hitters with 300 or more home runs, behind only McGwire, Judge, and Babe Ruth. He hit 56 home runs last year and led the National League. He is currently in the process of making every contract projection about him look naive against the backdrop of history.
The normalization problem is real. The same thing happened with Yordan Alvarez, historically absurd numbers in the wrong news cycle, and nobody paid attention until the moment had passed. The home run has been inflated enough recently that 50-something feels like a hot streak and not a record chase. Judge hit 62. Cal Raleigh hit 60 in 2025. Shohei Ohtani has been pushing 55 every year. The context has been stretched until we can’t see the edges anymore.
But 66 is not 55. The guys ahead of 62 are not clean-era hitters having big years. They are the reason baseball had a congressional hearing. Schwarber is about to walk into that record book with his helmet on and his expression suggesting he’d rather be watching film.
He has roughly 90 games left. He needs 38 more home runs. He is currently hitting them at a pace of 66. I don’t know what else you need me to tell you.
