Oct 8, 2025; Los Angeles, California, USA; Philadelphia Phillies designated hitter Kyle Schwarber (12) leaves the field after the game against the Los Angeles Dodgers during game three of the NLDS round for the 2025 MLB playoffs at Dodger Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images
LOS ANGELES – Kyle Schwarber fought back tears in his corner of the visitor’s clubhouse of Dodger Stadium Thursday night as he fielded questions from the media.
Once the cameras dispersed, Schwarber went down the line on the opposite side of the room, with a handshake or a hug for each player in turn, a few words whispered about offseason plans or get-‘em-next-year aspirations. He finally settled back into his locker – beer in hand, incongruously joyous Phillies Phanatic print plastered to the concrete wall behind him – as the final postgame Phillies wrap session of 2025 commenced.
As has happened so often, the rest of the Phillies gravitated towards him, sipping beers and chatting as they’ve done a 100-some-odd times since March. Only this one, like so many other actions in another disappointing National League Division Series exit, was freighted by the possibility of finality.
“It doesn’t feel good,” Schwarber said after his Phillies lost, 2-1, in 11 innings in Game 4 of the NLDS. “You make a lot of different relationships in the clubhouse. You never know how it’s going to work out. You just make so many personal relationships with guys, and you spend that kind of time, how much time with these guys throughout the course of a year, and they've become family” – Schwarber paused there, choked up – “and you just never know how it's going to go.
“But these guys all know how I feel about them.”
The offseason, the latest the Phillies head to without reaching the ultimate goal of a world championship, will be about how the Phillies feel about Schwarber, at age 32, off a trend-defying career season. And how Schwarber feels about extending his stay in a city where he has become a legend but not yet a world champion.
On top of the shock of how it ended Thursday – Orion Kerkering’s double-error of an Andy Pages dribbler with the bases loaded in the 11th to allow Hyeseong Kim to score – was the sense of uncertainty hovering over it all. Schwarber is at the end of a four-year, $79 million contract, a pending free agent like J.T. Realmuto and Ranger Suarez, plus the usual churn of guys on short-term contracts. For a team whose core has remained intact since 2022 save for the departure of Rhys Hoskins, the Phillies now face several central pieces ending their tenures in red pinstripes.
An emotional Kyle Schwarber discusses the loss and his future as he heads towards free agency to @TyDaubert pic.twitter.com/oUgeqTzyZx
— On Pattison (@OnPattison) October 10, 2025
Schwarber felt it Thursday.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for the guys in here, our organization, the coaching staff, everyone top to bottom,” Schwarber said. “This is a premier organization, and a lot of people should feel very lucky that you're playing for a team that is trying to win every single year, and you have a fanbase that cares, and you have an ownership that cares.”
Schwarber is coming off a career season in which he led the National League in homers (56) and the majors in RBIs (132). His two-homer game in Game 3’s 8-2 win sparked the Phillies’ only postseason victory and moved him into a tie for third place in all-time postseason home runs at 22.
As a designated hitter, Schwarber had his most productive season at age 32. Two years removed from batting .197, he hit .240 or better for the second straight campaign. He tallied his seventh career 30-home run season, and he’s never hit fewer than 38 in his four seasons with the Phillies. From being non-tendered by the Cubs at the end of 2020, Schwarber has proved himself fitter and more durable – he played all 162 games this season for the first time in his career – and reinvented himself in key areas, like setting the single-season MLB record for homers by left-handed batters off left-handed pitchers at 23.
Schwarber’s value is also outside the white lines, from his community presence to his veteran leadership in the clubhouse, which extended to what may be his final act as a Phillie, consoling Kerkering to make sure the 24-year-old knew, “I don't think that that's going to define Kirk's career.”
“Schwarbs is obviously one of our team leaders, one of the cornerstones of this organization,” Bryce Harper said, in stating his case for both Schwarber and Realmuto. “I don't know. I'm not really sure what happens or what goes into this offseason or where we kind of go from here. I think obviously those two guys are going to be a main decision for us, main competition for us as a team and as a club. Obviously we love those two guys and would want him back.”
Schwarber wasn’t the problem for the Phillies this postseason. He collected one of four hits in Game 4, a first-inning double in which he was stranded at third. He was 0-for-7 in the first three games before his two homers in Game 3 and finished 3-for-16 with two runs scored and three RBIs.
He was just 2-for-16 with a solo homer in last year’s NLDS loss to the Mets, though he launched 11 homers and drove in 16 runs in 30 postseason games in 2022 and 2023 combined.
Schwarber has been through a version of this process before. After his non-tender by the Cubs, he signed a one-year deal for $10 million with the Nationals in 2021. If he could prove he wasn’t injury prone or seemingly sliding toward platoon duty, maybe a larger offer would beckon.
It did, after a midseason trade to Boston, via the Phillies. Now he’s looking at what might be the last big contract of his career – while the Phillies look to what feels like a last chance to maximize the current group.
“I've always said there's going to be mutual interest between both of us,” Schwarber said. “So we'll see where that takes off.”
