How many Schwarbombs can Kyle Schwarber hit? 50? 60? Phillies slugger on-team record HR pace

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Ryan Howard hit home runs as far and as fast as any slugger of his era. He’s still the only player to sock one completely into the third deck in 22 years of Citizens Bank Park — and he did it twice.

So how about it, Ryan.

Who would win in a home run derby in their primes between two of the best Phillies to ever launch ’em over the fence? Howard — the only Phillie to top 50 homers in a season, when he totaled 58 in 2006 — or current sensation Kyle Schwarber? Schwarber leads the National League with 40 homers, and No. 40 came in style, a grand slam as he dug in to roaring “MVP! MVP!” chants.

“It’d be a tight one,” Howard said. “Young Howie put some balls in the seats. Schwarbs is nothing to sneeze at.”

Schwarber’s 40 homers this season put him well ahead of the pace to best his career-high of 47 set in 2023, one better than the 46 he hit in 2022 in the first season of a four-year, $79 million free-agent contract.

Howard’s team mark of 58 remains in play if Schwarber keeps scorching balls like he has since he won All-Star Game MVP honors after he hit three homers in the game’s first-ever swing-off. Schwarber has 10 homers — dubbed Schwarbombs that have made him arguably the most popular franchise star — since the break for the Phillies, who lead the NL East as they get set to open a 10-game road trip on Friday in Texas.

Howard hit 198 homers from 2006 to 2009 and helped the Phillies win the 2008 World Series before his career was cut short by injury. It’s the ring he treasures most these days. But he looks back now in admiration of his record 2006 season, a feat he didn’t necessarily enjoy as much in real time, just as he expected Schwarber to do of this season well after retirement.

“I think he’ll look back and one day say, ‘I hit 50 home runs, and have no clue how I did,’” Howard said.

Howard might be on to something. Schwarber indeed says he has no clue why his home run total has been going, going, gone through the roof at this point of the season.

“You go into every year in the offseason and you try and find ways to keep getting better,” he said. “It's not like I went into the offseason saying I want to try and hit more home runs or anything like that. I think it's just trying to be consistent with what you're doing. The more consistency you can find in your swing and in your work, I think that will lead to results on the field.”

His results are a key reason why the Phillies are on track to make the playoffs for the fourth straight season.

He hit 40 homers in the Phillies' first 112 games — one more than Howard over the first 112 games of 2006. His .965 OPS is third in baseball and he leads baseball with 94 RBIs. Schwarber has played every game this season, almost exclusively as the designated hitter.

Perhaps no moment so far this season has been as automatic an entry into the season highlight video as his game Monday against Baltimore. Schwarber had already connected on a two-run home run deep in the second deck. The crowd of 41,099 fans were in a Schwarbomb frenzy when he came to the plate in the sixth. He heard the MVP chants as he sent one into the right-center seats off Yaramil Hiraldo for his ninth career grand slam and second of the season.

“Those are the moments that you take in as a player,” Schwarber said. “Those are special things that happen and that kind of just go in the back of the memory. Hold on to those things for a while. It was obviously a really cool thing and I appreciate it.”

Schwarber's production raises two pivotal questions down the stretch; Can a designated hitter in the National League not named Shohei Ohtani win MVP and just how much of the bank will Schwarber break when the impending free agent signs his new deal?

Schwarber and the Phillies failed to reach a deal ahead of the season and contract talks were tabled until after the season. Phillies managing partner John Middleton has remained steadfast in his commitment to wanting Schwarber back.

“We need no motivation whatsoever when it comes to Kyle Schwarber,” Middleton said in July. “He’s great. We thought he was great when we signed him years ago. We thought he was great consistently through the years. There’s nothing Kyle does that surprises us."

Schwarber could command a new deal that would place him among the highest-paid players in the game. Fair enough, perhaps, for what's he accomplished over his four seasons in Philadelphia. But can a player who turns 33 ahead of next season really be counted on to club 40-plus homers a season deep into his 30s without adding any defensive value?

Maybe if that player wins an MVP (oh, and a World Series).

Ohtani last season became the first primary designated hitter and first player who didn’t appear defensively for a single inning to win an MVP. The Los Angeles Dodgers star remained the favorite in 2025 to win another one, with Schwarber a distant second, per BetMGM Sportsbook.

But hitting 50 homers — do we hear 60? — is still very much in play for Schwarber even if he's not sure how he's doing it.

“Sometimes it's just one of those things where you're just in it,” Howard said, “and it just happens.”

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Philadelphia Phillies' Kyle Schwarber reacts to his solo home run during the eighth inning of a baseball game against the Detroit Tigers, Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Chris Szagola)

Philadelphia Phillies' Kyle Schwarber hits a grand slam home run during the sixth inning of a baseball game against the Baltimore Orioles, Monday, Aug. 4, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Chris Szagola)

Philadelphia Phillies' Kyle Schwarber, right, celebrates his two-run home run with teammates during the third inning of a baseball game against the Baltimore Orioles, Monday, Aug. 4, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Chris Szagola)

Philadelphia Phillies' Kyle Schwarber, right, celebrates after a home run by Weston Wilson, left, during the eighth inning of a baseball game against the Baltimore Orioles, Monday, Aug. 4, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Chris Szagola)

Philadelphia Phillies' Kyle Schwarber celebrates after hitting a double during the seventh inning of a baseball game against the Chicago White Sox in Chicago, Tuesday, July 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

NUUK, Greenland (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump has made an American takeover of Greenland a focus of his second term in the White House, calling it a national security priority while repeating false claims about the strategic Arctic island.

In recent comments, he has floated using military force as an option to take control of Greenland. He has said if the U.S. does not acquire the island, which is a self-governing territory of NATO ally Denmark, then it will fall into Chinese or Russian hands.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

TRUMP, discussing the security situation in the Arctic: “We need that because if you take a look outside of Greenland right now, there are Russian destroyers, there are Chinese destroyers and, bigger, there are Russian submarines all over the place. We’re not gonna have Russia or China occupy Greenland, and that’s what they’re going to do if we don’t."

THE FACTS: Experts have repeatedly rebuffed Trump's claims of Chinese and Russian military forces lurking off Greenland's coastline. Experts say Russia instead operates in the Barents Sea, off the Scandinavian coast, and both China and Russia have a presence in the Bering Sea south of Alaska.

“That statement makes no sense in terms of facts,” said Andreas Østhagen, research director for Arctic and ocean politics at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Oslo, Norway. “There are no Russian and Chinese ships all over the place around Greenland. Russia and/or China has no capacity to occupy Greenland or to take control over Greenland.”

“The only Chinese I see is when I go to the fast food market,” Lars Vintner, a heating engineer told The Associated Press in Greenland's capital Nuuk. He said he frequently goes sailing and hunting and has never seen Russian or Chinese ships. Another Greenlander, Hans Nørgaard, told AP that Trump's claims are “fantasy.”

Lin Mortensgaard, an expert on the international politics of the Arctic at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said that while there are probably Russian submarines — as there are across the vast Arctic region — near Greenland, there are no surface vessels.

China has research vessels in the Central Arctic Ocean, and while the Chinese and Russian militaries have done joint exercises in the Arctic, they have taken place closer to Alaska, she said.

Asked about Trump’s claim that there are multiple Chinese and Russian ships and submarines around the island, Greenland business minister Naaja Nathanielsen responded Tuesday: "Not that we are aware of."

While Russia and China have an interest in the Arctic, “we don’t detect an actual threat," she said.

“America is still recognized as quite a big superpower,” Nathanielsen added, “and I don’t see any appetite from Russia or China to destabilize this.”

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TRUMP, discussing Denmark's defenses in Greenland: "You know what their defense is? Two dog sleds."

THE FACTS: The Sirius Dog Sled Patrol, an elite Danish naval unit that conducts long-range reconnaissance and enforces Danish sovereignty in the Arctic wilderness, is stationed in Greenland.

It's a key part of the Danish military infrastructure in the inhospitable Arctic terrain, experts say.

“Remember, transportation of the area is either by sea or by air. There are no highways,” said Steven Lamy, an international relations professor and Arctic security expert at the University of Southern California. “You can't basically get in a car or a Bradley vehicle or tank or anything and go up there. So they have dog sleds.”

In addition to these special elite forces, Denmark has several surface patrol ships and surveillance aircraft and the kingdom is moving to further strengthen its military presence around Greenland and in the wider North Atlantic. Last year, the government announced a roughly 14.6 billion-kroner ($2.3 billion) agreement with parties including the governments of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, another self-governing territory of Denmark, to “improve capabilities for surveillance and maintaining sovereignty in the region.”

The plan includes three new Arctic naval vessels, two additional long-range surveillance drones and satellite capacity.

Meanwhile, Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command is headquartered in Nuuk, the capital, and tasked with the “surveillance, assertion of sovereignty and military defense of Greenland and the Faroe Islands,” according to its website. It has smaller satellite stations across the island. Greenland also guards part of what is known as the GIUK (Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom) Gap, where NATO monitors Russian naval movements in the North Atlantic.

The U.S. Department of Defense also operates the remote Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, which was built after the U.S. and Denmark signed the Defense of Greenland Treaty in 1951. It supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations for the U.S. and NATO.

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TRUMP, discussing why Greenland is part of the Danish kingdom: “The fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn’t mean that they own the land. I’m sure we had lots of boats go there also.”

THE FACTS: The first humans arrived in northern Greenland circa 2,500 B.C., traveling from what is now Canada after the narrow strait separating the island from North America froze over. The Norse explorer Erik the Red arrived circa A.D. 985 with a fleet of Viking ships, according to the medieval Icelandic sagas.

In 1721, Lutheran missionary Hans Egede arrived in Greenland and ultimately began efforts to convert the Indigenous people to Christianity, marking the start of Denmark’s modern colonization of Greenland, which formally became a Danish colony in 1814. The U.S. government recognized Denmark’s right to the whole of Greenland more than a century later.

“It’s the same logic about the U.S. and sovereignty, right? You have a couple of boats arriving from Europe and now you own the United States of America,” said Østhagen, of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute. “The Indigenous population was there before you guys."

In 2009, Greenland became a self-governing country within the Danish kingdom. The island has a right to independence when requested by local voters.

International law has developed over the centuries, pivoting from land-grabbing colonial powers to modern-day treaties honoring borders largely developed after World War II.

Ulrik Pram Gad, a senior researcher and Arctic security expert at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said postwar it has remained important, especially to the U.S., for countries to refrain from exerting power over other territories.

“We shouldn’t just grab and go to war,” he said. “Rather, it should be peoples who have their self-determination.”

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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

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Dazio reported from Berlin and Zhang reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

FILE - Coloured houses covered by snow are seen from the sea in Nuuk, Greenland, on March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)

FILE - Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance tour the U.S. military's Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, March 28, 2025. (Jim Watson/Pool via AP, File)

Pituffik Space Base is pictured as Vice President JD Vance visits, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Greenland. (Jim Watson/Pool via AP)

Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)