Kyle Schwarber Powers Phillies - Pirates Win With 20th Homer

Kyle Schwarber hit two two-run homers and reached 20 for the season as the Phillies - Pirates ended in an 11-9 Philadelphia win in 10 innings Friday night. He got there on the earliest date in MLB history, and the Phillies’ comeback pulled them back within one game of.500 at 22-23.

Schwarber Sets MLB Mark

Schwarber’s first homer came off Braxton Ashcraft in the fifth inning, and he added another off Mason Montgomery in the seventh. The two swings gave him a major-league-leading 20 home runs and nine homers in his last eight games.

That pace pushed him past Luis Gonzalez’s previous mark of May 17, 2001. It also tied a Phillies club mark with 20 homers in the team’s first 45 games, a line first set by Cy Williams in 1923.

Harper And Marchan Answer

Bryce Harper kept the rally alive with four hits and a tying single. Gregory Soto later walked Schwarber on four pitches in the ninth, and Rafael Marchan followed in the 10th with a two-run single that finished the job.

Orion Kerkering handled the final inning for his first save of the season and the third save of his career. The Phillies erased a six-run deficit on the night and won despite trailing deep into the game.

Phillies Keep Moving

The win stretched Philadelphia’s run to 13-4 since Don Mattingly replaced Rob Thomson as manager. Schwarber said, “There's so much good that went on today that we were able to respond and fight back,” after the comeback, and Harper called the performance “One of the cooler things I've seen in baseball.”

For a club that entered at 22-23, the result mattered as much for the record as for the power display. Schwarber’s surge now sits at the center of a team that has clawed back toward.500 while getting production from the middle of the order and late-inning help when it needed both.