The 2025 season was a career year across the board for Kyle Schwarber.
In his age-32 season for the Phillies, the lefty slugger appeared in all 162 games for Philadelphia and hit a career-high 56 home runs and set career-best marks with 4.9 Wins Above Replacement (FanGraphs) and a 152 wRC+. Schwarber tied a career high with a .928 OPS and led the National League with his 56 homers, joining Ryan Howard (58 in 2006) as the only Phillies hitters with a 50-homer season.
Here’s a look at how Schwarber found his remarkable success in 2025, explained by six key numbers.
Of all the numbers that exemplified Schwarber’s success in 2025, his 23 home runs against left-handed pitchers might be the most important. Those 23 home runs against southpaws were the most in a single season by a left-handed hitter against left-handed pitching in MLB history. Schwarber was better on the whole against lefties, too, posting a .964 OPS against them, compared to .905 against right-handed pitching. Before Schwarber, the most homers by a lefty against left-handed pitchers was 22 by Matt Olson in 2021.
Schwarber was already one of the game’s premier power threats before 2025, but his ability to barrel baseballs — batted balls with an optimal combination of exit velocity and launch angle — reached a new high. Schwarber boasted a career-best 20.8% barrel rate, just the second time he’s exceeded 20% in a season (20.1 percent in 2022). Schwarber had 85 total barrels, by far the most in any season in his career and the 10th-most by a hitter in a season under Statcast (since 2015). Put simply, Schwarber was barreling baseballs all season long, which in turn led to a remarkable power output.
59.6 percent hard-hit rate
On a similar note, Schwarber also set a career high with a 59.6% hard-hit rate, the percentage of batted balls with a 95-plus mph exit velocity. Similar to his previous ability to barrel baseballs, Schwarber was already a consistent threat for hard-hit baseballs, but that skill reached a new high in ‘25 — his previous high was 55.5% in 2024. Schwarber’s average exit velocity, too, was at a career-best 94.3 mph, the first time he’s crossed 94 mph in a season.
35 home runs against fastballs
Throwing fastballs to Schwarber in 2025 was a bad idea. Schwarber’s 35 home runs against fastballs were the third-most in the Majors, trailing only Cal Raleigh’s 39 homers and Aaron Judge’s 36 long balls. Of Schwarber’s 35 fastball home runs, 24 came against four-seamers, while eight came against sinkers and three were against cutters. Schwarber had a .308 batting average and a .728 slugging percentage against fastballs, compared to a .171 batting average and a .398 slugging percentage against breaking balls and offspeed pitches.
31.1% pulled airball rate
As Schwarber has aged, he’s really leaned into the concept of pulling his batted balls in the air. Through the 2022 season, Schwarber pulled 20.3 percent of his batted balls in the air (fly balls, line drives and popups). Since 2023, that number has skyrocketed to 28.9%, including his career-high 31.1% clip in ‘25, which ranked fifth among qualified hitters. A whopping 39 of Schwarber’s 56 home runs were pulled, the second most behind Raleigh’s 46 pulled homers.
.901 SLG against middle-middle pitches
Here’s a simplistic way of looking at Schwarber’s success in 2025: He absolutely mashed against pitches in the heart of the zone (aka middle-middle pitches). Schwarber had a whopping .901 slugging percentage against pitches in the heart of the zone, the highest mark of any season in his career and the third-best in the Majors (minimum 100 plate appearances) behind Judge and Nick Kurtz. Of Schwarber’s 56 home runs, 44 came on pitches located in the middle of the strike zone.
