Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber on his home run milestone, what comes next

“Something told me in my mind there might be a 3-2 slider right here,” Schwarber said of his historic swing after the game. “Let’s just say I put a good swing on it, right?”

There was no doubt that Schwarber did, sending the ball 466 feet off the facade of the third deck at Coors Field and also sending the large Phillies contingent present in the Mile High City into an uproar.

“I wish I could have done it at home, but there was a pretty good Phillies crowd here tonight,” Schwarber said.

It was a Phillies crowd that saw their team down 3-2 entering the eighth inning. However, Philadelphia scored seven unanswered runs over the final two innings to post the victory and send the Rockies to their 39th loss in 47 games.

“It was funny. I was talking to a lot of different guys where I remember my first time coming here (Coors Field) and we’re having our team meeting and they were like, ‘Hey, don’t panic if you’re down 7-0. We’ve seen a lot of 15-14 baseball games here,” Schwarber recalled.

“I feel with this group, it doesn’t really matter who we’re playing. I feel like that whenever we’re down, we always find that rally to put us within a swing of either tying it or taking the lead, whatever it is. It’s such a rare thing to have. I feel like that’s been a common theme throughout the last two, three or four years here that whenever we’re down, I feel like we’re finding the way right back.”

While the night was celebrating the win, it was also looking at Schwarber’s milestone and where it put him in team and MLB history. With the 300th home run, Schwarber became the 11^th active MLB player to reach the milestone and the 163rd in MLB history.

He is also the sixth player in franchise history to join the 300-homer club in a Phillies uniform, along with Chuck Klein, Roy Sievers, Mike Schmidt, Ryan Howard and Bryce Harper.

The homer off Alexander wasn’t only historic, but also showed just how dominant Schwarber has been against left-handed pitching this season. In the 74 plate appearances against lefties heading into Monday, Schwarber was slashing .305/.446/.712 with seven homers and a 213 wRC+.

Schwarber transformed his approach against lefties in the offseason and the work is certainly paying off. In the middle of a monster season so far where Schwarber has 16 home runs in 47 games and trails only Shohei Ohtani in long balls (the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar hit his 17th homer in a loss on Monday night), the 32-year-old Schwarber is enjoying seeing the fruits of his offseason labor.

“Just to work continually to keep trying to get better,” Schwarber said of his approach. “Trying to be great for these guys and trying to help these guys win baseball games is what it’s all about.”

It’s also about what milestones are still in reach for Schwarber. Averaging 41 homers every 162 games, the concept of reaching 400 or 500 homers certainly is in the realm of possibilities. Only 58 players have reached 400 homers and just 28 have hit 500.

For now, though, Schwarber is more concerned about the wins the Phillies are racking up than how far he climbs up the home run leaderboard.

“You know, I was just making the joke that if I got 200 more, I can quit,” Schwarber said. “There’s a lot of things that have to go right. I don’t really think about that. I just live day to day with these guys and obviously want to go win a championship here.”