Former Cubs star Kyle Schwarber has 21st 4-homer game in MLB, drives in Phillies-record 9 runs

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The Chicago Cubs are navigating an offensive slump. There's currently one player who's single handedly a slump buster.

Former Chicago Cubs slugger and current Phillies star Kyle Schwarber had a historic night on Thursday. He hit four home runs Thursday night against Atlanta to become the 21st major leaguer and fourth Phillies player to accomplish the feat.

Schwarber batted in nine RBIs and recorded 16 total bases on the evening; overall, he has 49 homers on the year and has driven in 119 RBIs. The Cubs, in comparison, have three home runs and eight total runs in their last three games.

The backstory:

Schwarber was 4 for 6 with a Phillies-record nine RBIs in the 19-4 victory. He took the outright National League homer lead with a career-high 49 and moved within one of Seattle's Cal Raleigh for the major league lead. Schwarber leads the majors with a career-high 119 RBIs.

"It’s pretty cool," Schwarber said. "It was a fun night, great atmosphere. Wouldn’t want to do it with a better group of guys than we have here."

Mike Schmidt was the last Philadelphia player to hit four homers in a game, doing at the Chicago Cubs in April 1976. Schwarber had the third four-homer game of the season, following Eugenio Suárez and Nick Kurtz.

"It just cooperated," Schwarber said. "You can do everything right and get out, and you can do everything wrong and get a hit. Got some pitches and put some good swings on it."

The Philadelphia star started the power surge with a solo shot in the first off Cal Quantrill, sending a 2-1, curveball into the seats in right field. Schwarber hit a flyout to center in the second.

After Quantrill was lifted with one out and two runners on base in the fourth, Schwarber greeted lefty Austin Cox by sending a 3-2 curveball over the wall in right for his fourth multi-homer game of the season.

With "M-V-P! M-V-P!" chants ringing down from Phillies fans in the fifth, Schwarber launched a three-run, opposite-field drive off Cox to put Philadelphia ahead 15-3. In the seventh, Schwarber hit a three-run shot to right off Wander Suero to make it 18-4.

Schwarber popped out in the eighth.

"I stink against position players," Schwarber joked. "All you’re trying to do is get a good pitch. I got the pitch. Just popped it up."

The 32-year-old Schwarber has 333 homers in 11 seasons in the majors with the Cubs and the Phillies. His previous career high was 47 in 2023 for Philadelphia.

- The Associated Press

By the numbers:

Kyle Schwarber entered play on Thursday night with 46 homers, one behind his career-high set back in 2023. He then tied that mark in the first inning with a 450-foot, second-deck laser to right field.

That thing got out of there in a hurry. Three innings later, with the Phillies already up 8-3, Schwarber came up with a runner on second base, and delivered another home run. A new career-high of 48 homers! This one just missed the second deck, but it was more of a moonshot, anyway.

Schwarber was not done. Philadelphia was up 12-3 in the fifth inning, and Schwarber came up with two runners on this time, and hit a ball the opposite way, once again for a homer. A solo shot, a 2-run dinger and a 3-run jack. Schwarber was approaching the long ball version of a cycle, with four innings to go.

He wouldn’t get there, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. The Phillies just didn’t put the required number of baserunners on for him in the seventh inning — Schwarber hit a fourth homer, another 3-run job, to put Philadelphia up 18-4.

Even more stunning is that Schwarber very well could have had a fifth blast. He was just the fourth player ever, per Elias, to get a chance at a fifth home run in a game, after Bobby Lowe, Lou Gehrig and Mike Cameron — and none of those three actually hit a fifth home run. Position player Vidal Brujan was on the mound for the Braves at this point, given the lopsided affair, and he got Schwarber to pop out on a 55-mph pitch that was right down the pipe. 

A real shame, as it not only would have been the first-ever 5-homer game, but Schwarber had already set a club record for RBIs with 9: another 3 there would have been an even more difficult feat for someone to match down the line.

Still! Schwarber’s four homers gave him an NL-leading 49 for the year, which is not only a new career-high for him with a month of the season to go, but also the second-most in Phillies’ history. With his first homer of the evening, Schwarber tied his own 2022 for the eighth-most in club history, his second tied him with Ryan Howard’s 2007 and Jim Thome’s 2003 for the fifth-most, his third brought him even with Howard’s 2008 and Mike Schmidt’s 1980, and, finally, his fourth blast gave him sole possession of second all-time among Phillies. With 28 games left in the season, Howard’s 58 long balls from 2006 is all that stands ahead of Schwarber.