foster griffin is scheduled to take the ball Monday night at Nationals Park, and the first assignment is brutal. Kyle Schwarber arrives with 29 home runs and a weekend burst that made the opening game of this four-game series feel like a power test from the first pitch.
Kyle Schwarber’s weekend damage
Schwarber finished the previous weekend as MLB’s home run leader, and the numbers around that surge are sharp. Over his previous six plate appearances, he produced four home runs, a single and a walk.
That stretch included three homers on Saturday night against the New York Mets in a 15-3 rout, then another three-run shot on Sunday. He drove in six runs on Saturday, opened the eight-run third inning with a 456-foot blast, later added a 457-foot three-run homer, and became the first MLB slugger to connect on two 450-foot homers in the same inning.
Foster Griffin gets the first look
The Nationals did not get a softened opening to the series. They drew the Philadelphia Phillies and Schwarber at the start of a four-game set between NL East rivals, with Griffin responsible for the first answer to that home-run pace.
His challenge is not just the current streak, but the scale of it. Schwarber had 216 home runs with the Phillies, and his recent run had already pushed him past the kind of multi-game power output that can change a series before the middle innings.
Phillies power keeps building
The weekend surge also came with a longer view. Schwarber’s final five at-bats against the New York Mets produced homers that traveled a combined 1,690 feet, and the latest swing from that run came before this matchup even began.
He had homered on May 9, 2026, against the Colorado Rockies at Citizens Bank Park, then carried that form into Saturday and Sunday. Whether Griffin can slow that sequence on Monday night is the part of this game that will decide how quickly the series tilts toward Philadelphia.
