Phillies fans booing Kyle Schwarber might haunt their team for years to come

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: With their backs against the wall, the Philadelphia Phillies once again came up small at home in critical playoff game. The script was all too familiar in Game 2 of the NLDS against the Los Angeles Dodgers, with Philly’s offense going silent for much of the night before a furious ninth-inning rally fell just short in a 4-3 loss that now puts their season on the brink.

At this point, it’s becoming an alarming trend. The Phillies have now scored three or fewer runs in seven of their last postseason games; perhaps unsurprisingly, they’re 1-7 in that span, from an NLCS collapse in 2023 to last season’s NLDS loss to the rival New York Mets. Making it all the more painful is that it’s the team’s biggest hitters who are struggling the most: Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber are MVP candidates with long track records of postseason success, but even they have been MIA over this stretch.

Those two were presented with a perfect opportunity to put that narrative to rest on Monday night, but still the story remained the same. Harper struck out with two men on and one out in the bottom of the sixth of a scoreless game, and then both Schwarber and Harper came up empty after Trea Turner’s RBI single in the eighth cut L.A.’s lead to 4-1. After the latter at-bat, the Citizens Bank Park crowd decided it had finally had enough, showering their two most accomplished hitters with boos.

Harper has seen it all over his time in Philadelphia. He’s in the midst of a 13-year, $330 million contract, and this is for all intents and purposes his team; he can bear whatever Phillies fans want to heap on him. Schwarber, however, is a much more delicate case, and this can’t have been the impression the hometown team wanted to leave on the slugger in what will likely be the last time they see him before he hits free agency.

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Phillies fans send Kyle Schwarber off to free agency in the worst way possible

Ever since the two sides failed to come to an agreement on a contract extension last offseason, we’ve been told that there wasn’t actually anything to worry about. Schwarber clearly loved it in Philly, and the Phillies clearly loved Schwarber; they couldn’t agree on a number, sure, but it was in each side’s best interest to figure it out eventually.

At a certain point, though, you start to wonder why a deal never got done if it really were a fait accompli. Schwarber’s career season in 2025 has come at an opportune time for his bank account, and he figures to have plenty of suitors as he hits the open market — yes, he’s entering his age-33 season, and yes, he’s a DH only who offers little to no value beyond his bat, but the bat is so good (and this player pool is so thin) that some sort of three- or four-year deal at around $25-30 million is bound to present itself.

Will the Phillies be willing and able to meet that price? This remains an expensive team, one that will have holes to fill this offseason and not a ton of financial flexibility to do so if John Middleton insists on keeping the payroll relatively in check the way he did last winter. The hope used to be that the team would benefit from if not a hometown discount then at least a hometown tiebreaker, with Schwarber looking for any excuse to come back to a place he’s clearly comfortable.

Now, though, who knows? Getting booed off the field is a heck of a final impression, as is flaming out of the postseason for the third straight year in shockingly similar fashion. Maybe the Phillies will pay up after all, but this has already become far more interesting than it had to be, and the Philly faithful aren’t helping matters.