It’s the question that’s been on a lot of Major League Baseball fans’ minds this season: How is Kyle Schwarber suddenly this good?
Schwarber has always had a propensity for the long ball, with two previous seasons of 40-plus home runs. Yet, he not only broke the 50-homer threshold for the first time this season, but simultaneously established himself as a much more well-rounded hitter, with a career-best .946 OPS entering play on Thursday.
The Philadelphia Phillies have to be more than satisfied with the return on the four-year, $79 million investment they made in Schwarber before the 2022 season. But unfortunately for them, it will likely take significantly more than that to keep him around this time.
Another four-year deal seems reasonable considering Schwarber will be 33 next season, but will any team step up and outbid the Phillies, potentially even by a decent margin? Bleacher Report’s Zach Buckley doesn’t seem to think so.
On Wednesday, Buckley predicted that the Phillies would broker another four-year agreement to keep their 56-homer bat in the middle of the order for the rest of his prime.
“Whenever Philadelphia’s campaign comes to a close, the 32-year-old slugger will hit the open market on the heels of his most productive season to date,” Buckley wrote. “And considering he came into this year as a two-time All-Star with some monster stat lines on his resume, that’s saying quite a bit.
“Given that the Phillies’ win-now window remains open, they can and should do everything in their power to keep Schwarber around. It’ll be costly to do so—and they have other business to attend to—but the cost of losing him would be far greater.”
The general consensus seems to be that the Phillies are motivated to keep Schwarber, and they’ve shown in recent years with extensions for pitchers Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler that they typically can succeed at locking down one of their own.
However, until a new agreement is reached, Phillies fans have to at least be a little nervous that another club will blow the slugger away with their offer.