The Main Event

  • September 10, 2025 – Kyle Schwarber hits his 50th home run of the season off Justin Hagenman in the 7th inning against the Mets, becoming just the second Phillie ever (after Ryan Howard) — and the 34th player in MLB history — to reach 50 homers in a season.

On September 10, 2025, Kyle Schwarber teed off on a pitch from Mets right-hander Justin Hagenman in the seventh inning at Citizens Bank Park, drove it 437 feet into the center field seats, and joined a club that had exactly one member in Phillies history. Schwarber became just the second Phillies player ever to hit 50 home runs in a season, and only the 34th player to do it in major league history. The only man ahead of him on the franchise list was Ryan Howard, whose 58-homer explosion in 2006 had stood alone atop the Phillies record book for nearly two decades.

Howard hit his 50-homer season in his age-26 year, only his second full season in the big leagues. He had won National League Rookie of the Year in 2005, then blew the doors off the league the following year, finishing with a .313 average, 58 home runs, 149 RBI and 104 runs. The 58 homers not only shattered Mike Schmidt‘s previous Phillies record by ten, they also matched the number Jimmie Foxx put up for the Philadelphia Athletics back in 1932, tying the two sluggers for the most home runs in a season by a player in Philadelphia baseball history. Howard walked away with the NL MVP award that fall, and for a moment it looked like the record might not last long given how young he was.

Instead, no other Phillie got within shouting distance of 50 for nearly two decades. Schwarber’s own path to Howard’s neighborhood was a slower burn. He had led the National League in homers back in 2022, his first year in Philadelphia, with 46. He improved to 47 in 2023. Then in 2025, in his age-32 season, he strung together a career year for the ages, playing all 162 games and setting personal bests with 4.9 wins above replacement and a 152 wRC+. He finished the year with 56 home runs and 132 RBI, leading all of baseball in both categories and finishing runner-up in NL MVP voting. Schwarber came within two homers of catching Howard on the all-time Philadelphia single-season list, close enough that the record still feels alive every time he gets hot in September.

Similar Numbers, Very Different Careers

Howard and Schwarber reached the same rarefied 50-homer air, but they got there by nearly opposite routes. Howard was a homegrown product, a fifth-round Phillies draft pick who broke into the lineup as a classic middle-of-the-order first baseman with a long, powerful left-handed swing and a high strikeout rate that came bundled with his prodigious power. His peak arrived almost immediately, and while he stayed productive for years afterward, a torn Achilles tendon on the final out of the 2011 NLDS started a steep decline that effectively ended his effectiveness well before his career formally wound down.

Schwarber’s road was longer and much less direct. He broke in with the Chicago Cubs as a converted catcher and outfielder, helped Chicago win the 2016 World Series, and spent six seasons there without ever hitting more than 38 homers in a year. The Cubs non-tendered him after the 2020 season. He bounced to Washington and then Boston in 2021, hit a then-career-high 32 home runs and made his first All-Star team, before signing with Philadelphia as a free agent the following winter on a four-year, $79 million contract that looked reasonable at the time and now looks like one of the shrewdest deals in franchise history. Rather than declining in his thirties the way many sluggers do, Schwarber got better, transitioning largely into a full-time designated hitter role that has kept him durable and productive well into his thirties.

Where Schwarber Stands Now

Schwarber has slowed only slightly in 2026. Through Philadelphia’s first 144 games, he has already launched 44 home runs, tops in the major leagues, ahead of Chicago’s Pete Crow-Armstrong in second place with 41. He is riding a scorching stretch entering the second week of September, having gone deep in three straight games against Atlanta, including a go-ahead, game-winning shot in a 1-0 win that marked the fifth time in his career he has homered in a game that finished by that exact score, tying him with Ted Williams for the most such homers in history.

That same swing carried extra significance for the Howard comparison. The home run was Schwarber’s 230th as a Phillie, which broke Howard’s franchise record for most home runs in any five-year span with the team. Howard had hit 229 from 2006 through 2010, a stretch that included the Phillies’ 2008 World Series championship. Schwarber passed him in his fifth season with the club.

With 18 games remaining on the Phillies’ schedule and Philadelphia sitting at 82-63 and holding a National League Wild Card spot, Schwarber needs six more homers to reach 50 for the second consecutive year. Given his recent pace, that is well within reach, though matching or catching Howard’s all-time franchise mark of 58 would require an extraordinary final three weeks. Whatever happens, Schwarber is already assured of a second run at the top of the Phillies’ single-season list, and Howard’s record no longer looks quite so untouchable.

The Phillies Who Fell Just Short

Howard and Schwarber are not the only Phillies sluggers who have flirted with 50. Mike Schmidt, whose franchise home run record Howard broke in 2006, hit 48 home runs in 1980, a career-high that came attached to an NL MVP award, a World Series title over Kansas City and World Series MVP honors of his own. It remains one of the greatest single seasons by a third baseman in major league history.

Jim Thome joined the Phillies as a free agent before the 2003 season, fresh off a 52-homer year in Cleveland, and promptly led the National League with 47 home runs and 131 RBI in his first year in Philadelphia, setting franchise records for homers by a left-handed hitter and by a first baseman at the time. Howard himself came close to matching his own 2006 peak twice more, hitting 47 in 2007 and a league-leading 48 in 2008, the year the Phillies won it all. None of those seasons cracked 50, which only underscores how difficult a threshold it is, and how rare it is for one franchise to produce two players who cleared it within a twenty-year span.

Philadelpia Baseball Events for September 10

  • September 10, 1939 – Some 25,000 fans gathered at Shibe Park as the Athletics staged a “Reunion of World Champions” between games of a doubleheader against the Red Sox, pitting stars of the 1929-31 dynasty against greats of the 1910-14 clubs, with Connie Mack on hand and a banquet that evening at Hotel Warwick.
  • September 10, 1965 – Hall of Fame pitcher Fergie Jenkins makes his MLB debut, throwing 4⅓ innings in relief of Jim Bunning as the Phillies beat the Cardinals 5-4 in 12 innings, earning Jenkins his first big-league win.
  • September 10, 1974 – Lou Brock ties, then breaks, Maury Wills‘ single-season stolen base record (105) and Max Carey‘s all-time NL mark (738) in a game at Philadelphia; the Phillies win 8-2.
  • September 10, 1985 – Mike Schmidt hits a three-run, walk-off home run to break an 11th-inning tie with Montreal — his 10th and final career walk-off homer.
  • September 10, 1991 – Larry Bowa is inducted into the Philadelphia Baseball Hall of Fame.
  • September 10, 2009 – Matt Stairs ties the Phillies’ single-season pinch-hit home run record with his fifth, a bases-loaded shot off former Phillies prospect Zach Segovia in Washington, though the Phillies lose to the Nationals 8-7.
  • September 10, 2018 – The Phillies return home to find the Citizens Bank Park infield too waterlogged to play despite tarps and hours of blowtorch drying; the game is postponed.
  • September 10, 2019 – Corey Dickerson hits two of the Phillies’ five home runs in a win over Atlanta; Scott Kingery legs out an inside-the-park homer after Ronald Acuña Jr. loses a deflected ball in play.

ICYMI

Philadelphia Baseball Birthdays for September 10

  • Joe Berry (born 1872) – A catcher whose entire major-league career consisted of a single game for the Phillies in 1902, going 1-for-4.
  • Irv Jeffries (born 1905) – An infielder who closed out his MLB career with the Phillies in 1934 after debuting with the Chicago White Sox in 1930.
  • Harry Anderson (born 1931) – An outfielder/first baseman who was named to the 1957 MLB Rookie All-Star team and had his best season in 1958, batting .301 with 23 home runs and 97 RBI for Philadelphia.
  • Danys Báez (born 1977) – A Cuban-born reliever, and 2005 All-Star with Tampa Bay, who pitched two seasons (2010-11) in the Phillies bullpen.
  • Neil Walker (born 1985) – A veteran infielder who played a stint with the Phillies in 2020 during his 12-year major-league career.
  • Mitch Walding (born 1992) – An infielder drafted by the Phillies in 2011 who made brief major-league appearances with the club in 2018 and 2019.

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