While Nick Castellanos struggled in his first season with the Philadelphia Phillies, Kyle Schwarber was worth every penny during year one of a four-year/$79 million free-agent contract.
In addition to immediately becoming a clubhouse leader, Schwarber led the National League with 46 home runs during the regular season, the sixth highest single-season total in franchise history.
For good measure, Schwarber added six more home runs during the Phillies’ improbable run to the World Series.
As Phillies Nation‘s Destiny Lugardo noted, the 52 home runs that Schwarber hit between the regular and postseason are the second most that a player has hit in a single-season in franchise history, trailing only Ryan Howard’s 2006 NL MVP season, when he homered 58 times.
Schwarber had a flare for the dramatic during his first season with the Phillies, which made it especially difficult to rank the top five home runs that he hit in 2022.
No. 5: Setting The Tone
Three years after left fielder Andrew McCutchen opened the 2019 season by hitting a leadoff home run in his first at-bat with the Phillies, Schwarber did the same thing.
On the seventh pitch of his at-bat against Frankie Montas and the Oakland Athletics, Schwarber connected for a 426-foot home run.
No. 4: The Season Saver
There was understandable concern about a September meltdown when the Phillies — having collapsed in the final month of the season in each of the four previous seasons — lost the first end of an Oct. 1 doubleheader 13-4 to the lowly Washington Nationals.
It was the sixth loss in seven games, and if the Phillies went winless over their final five contests, it wouldn’t have been especially shocking given the embarrassing fashion they lost in that Saturday afternoon.
That, of course, isn’t what happened.
The Phillies homered five times in the nightcap of the doubleheader, with Schwarber delivering two of those blasts in an 8-2 victory. The first of those two home runs came to lead off the game, and cut into the tension that had reached a boiling point after Game 1:
No. 3: NLCS Game 3
Given that the Phillies ultimately needed just five games to dispose of the San Diego Padres in the NLCS, the meltdown that took place in Game 2 is overlooked.
But Aaron Nola coughed up an early 4-0 lead in Game 2 of the NLCS, with the Phillies instead losing 8-5 to the Padres in a game with striking similarities to the infamous Cliff Lee loss in Game 2 of the 2011 NLDS.
Instead of coming home for a coronation at Citizens Bank Park that weekend, the NLCS was tied a 1-1 with the Padres having seized momentum in the series.
To make matters worse for the Phillies, they were facing Joe Musgrove — who had delivered a borderline legendary performance at Citi Field in the clinching game of the Wild Card Series against the New York Mets earlier in the postseason.
But just as he had all year, it was Schwarber who helped the Phillies to regain momentum, leading off Game 3 — an eventual 4-2 win — with a solo shot:
No. 2: Cue Up Callum
Schwarber brought Callum Scott’s “Dancing On My Own” with him from Boston, and gave the Phillies a reason to sing it on Oct. 3.
The Phillies entered the final series of the regular season against the eventual World Series Champion Houston Astros with a magic number of one to clinch their first playoff berth since 2011. They could punch their ticket with a win or a Milwaukee Brewers loss in one of the last three games of the season.
Quickly, Schwarber made clear that the Phillies weren’t going to wait on the Brewers to eliminate themselves.
Schwarber would hit 783 feet worth of home runs that Monday night, 394 of which came on an opposite-field home run off of Lance McCullers Jr. on the first pitch of the game:
No. 1: Titanic
If you hit a ball so far that Bryce Harper is in shock, well, it must be an all-time shot.
Schwarber hit his fair share of majestic home runs in his first season with the Phillies, but none more than what Tom McCarthy called a “Titanic” home run off of Yu Darvish in the top of the sixth inning in Game 1 of the NLCS.
The 488-foot shot was both the longest home run of Schwarber’s career and in the history of Petco Park, which opened in 2004:
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