Kyle Schwarber is not one to go half-baked into anything, not least a free agency period that could lead to the last major contract of his baseball career.
A veteran slugger who’s been around the free-agent block before, he did his diligence and took his meetings. He fielded offers and interest, in varying shades, with Cincinnati and Pittsburgh two of the clubs reportedly hottest for the services of the reigning National League home run and RBI champ.
But when all the information was before him, Schwarber and his wife Paige, with a new family addition expected imminently, didn’t forget where the offseason started.
It began in a meeting with Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, about his goals for a roster core of which Schwarber has been a key component since 2022 and the club’s soft pitch to retain him. It included an afternoon with owner John Middleton, talking baseball, family and much more.
“Those were conversations that I just never forgot,” Schwarber said via Zoom from his home in Ohio Wednesday, a day after signing a five-year contract to stay with the Phillies. “You go through the offseason, you start having different conversations with different teams, and just because those conversations were more fresh doesn’t mean that anything was forgotten. I know that was an important time and important conversations with Dave and Mr. Middleton.”
Whatever else the Phillies have or haven’t accomplished in a four-year stretch of playoff appearances that has yielded one pennant and two National League East titles, they’ve engendered a level of loyalty to the project. It was part of the lure for Trea Turner in free agency three years ago. It induced Aaron Nola to eschew free agency for a long-term deal last winter.
And now it’s brought back Schwarber. In the face of comparable offers, familiarity and family played a role in retaining the 32-year-old, perhaps for the bulk of a career trending toward 500 career home runs.
“You can look at everything, and knowing that John is committed to winning, and that Dave wants our organization to continue to keep pushing for a world championship, and we want to continue to win the East, what else for a player can you ask for (than) to win?,” Schwarber said. “… Those are things that are driving factors on a daily basis that, it’s not a given. Everything’s earned in our game.”
It’s not exactly a hometown discount, Schwarber going from a four-year, $79 million deal at age 28 in the winter before the 2022 season to five years and $150 million. It’ll take him through his age 37 season in red pinstripes, for a player who averaged 46 homers and 108 RBIs in his first four seasons in town. Five seasons at an average of 32 homers per would get Schwarber, who collected his 1,000th career hit and 300th career home run this season, over the hallowed 500-homer mark.
With Schwarber, the Phillies have averaged 92 wins per season since 2022. They reached the World Series that first year. While consecutive National League East titles have ended in Division Series eliminations, Schwarber is part of a nucleus that Dombrowski and company have looked long and hard at in divining what they’re willing to risk losing in order to improve.
The term and cost for a player Schwarber’s age who is essentially just a designated hitter by his early 30s is unusual. But Schwarber breaks the paradigm, beyond his history as a phenom who debuted in the bigs a little over a year after being drafted, then helped the Cubs end their legendary World Series drought after just 71 regular-season games thanks to his 2016 injury. His non-tender from the Cubs after the pandemic-shortened 2020 and his show-me year with Washington and Boston in 2021 rarely lead to one big contract much less two.
But Schwarber has shown improvement at every stage, from a batting average bouncing 51 points from 2023 to 2024, to a home run total rising by 18 from 2024 to 2025. His hard-won ability to hit lefties at a historic pace – his 23 homers off lefties in 2025 was the MLB record for a left-handed batter and more than he’d hit in his first seven seasons combined – is evidence of sustained change that eases the risk.
The caveats about the quick decay of power hitters in their 30s may not track for a player like Schwarber, given his nonpareil pitch selection and the compact venom of his swing. That’s in addition to his desire for constant refinement and improvement: Much as he still smarts from the Cubs non-tender, he referenced multiple times Wednesday that he wasn’t a “minor-league grinder” in his big league trajectory, emphasizing how he’s come to internalize those traits later in his career.
“There’s still things to improve on,” he said. “The nature of having experience and to realizing that you can come out on the other side of things, I think it’s given me a whole new kind of perspective on baseball, and it’s way more enjoyable, to be in that slump or whatever it is, and know that you’ll come out on the other side and you know what you have to do to get out of it.”
He’ll continue to navigate the good and the bad in Philadelphia, where he and his family are well-established. He cited moments with fans – he owns a faux constitution petitioning Middleton to re-sign him that a fan created – as poignant for him. As he vetted potential suitors, he asked not just about money and championship aspirations but about the non-baseball aspects, like organizations’ disposition toward the various charitable causes to which Schwarber devotes so much time.
If all other monetary terms were equal, Schwarber had the chance to pursue titles in Philadelphia, with people whose goals were aligned to his on and off the field. He could do it while being a beloved icon in a city he’s developed so much affection for.
“I think resonating with an organization and resonating with a fanbase is a huge part of you why you do it,” he said. “You want people, you want young kids, you want anyone to be at a game and at the end of the day look up and you want them to be wearing your jersey, or look at their mom and dad and say, hey, I want to be like Kyle or whatever it is. Those are things that you don’t take lightly.”
In the end, that was more than enough.