As Kyle Schwarber began to round the bases on Opening Day, the Rangers TV broadcasters griped that the moonshot that sent him on that short but joyous journey hadn’t quite been earned. A left-handed hitter, they said, can get “cheapies” by sending the ball over Citizens Bank Park’s friendly left-field fence, as Schwarber had. The ball in question, however, was no cheapie: per Statcast, it would’ve been a goner in 25 of 30 parks. To their credit, the broadcasters noticed that statistic as soon as it came
through, and corrected themselves on-air. But while they were wrong on that particular homer, the larger point is valid: Citizens Bank Park is a very friendly ballpark for homers, and particularly so for lefties. There is no question that Kyle Schwarber is a legitimate slugger; his power is as genuine as a quarter fresh off the line at the United States Mint. But it is fair to ask: how much has playing in CBP’s affable dimensions aided him?
By Statcast’s Park Factors (looking at 2023-2025), CBP was the fourth most homer-prone park in the bigs, behind only UNIQLO Field at Dodger Stadium (I’m using the full name less out of respect for the defending champs, and more out of respect for the sponsor, from which I purchased my favorite pair of pants), Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark, and Yankee Stadium. But if we look at left-handed hitters only, no park in MLB is more conducive to four-baggers than CBP. Batters of the sinister sort hit 28% more homers in Philly than they did elsewhere. It stands to reason that Schwarber, being a lefty, would benefit from that. And we can take a look at that via Statcast’s Expected Home Runs by Park metric, which tell us how many homers a player would have expected to have hit (xHR) if all of his batted balls were at a given park.
In 2025, Schwarber would’ve had 58 homers if all of his plate appearances were at home; only putting all of his batted balls in the A’s temporary digs in Sacramento would’ve given him more. In 2024, only Great American Ballpark would’ve allowed him to smash more dingers, and in 2023, no park would’ve been better for him than home, sweet home. So it’s clear that hitting at CBP really does help Schwarber hit more dingers.
There is something a little strange, though. You’d expect putting all of Schwarber’s batted balls in CBP to result in more homers than the actual Schwarber hit, given that no park in baseball is friendlier to lefty batters. But that’s not what we see. Here’s Schwarber’s actual homers (including postseason), vs. what Statcast says he’d have if we lived in a perfect world where every game were played at CBP, and every seventh inning featured a Phanatic Dance:
During his Phillies tenure, Schwarber has had only one season in which he’d have hit more homers if all of his batted balls were in Philly. That’s unusual, given how homer-friendly CBP is. Granted, half of Schwarber’s games really are played at CBP, meaning some of the benefits of putting all of his batted balls there are already baked in to his actual stats. But since all of the parks he plays in on the road are less conducive to lefty homers than CBP, you’d still expect moving all of those road batted balls to CBP to result in more hypothetical homers.
And as an example of this, if you look at some of the Phillies’ other lefties over the same time period, you’ll see that their xHR with all of their batted balls in CBP surpass their actual HR totals. Bryce Harper’s xHR totals in a CBP-only world were higher than his actual HR totals in each of the past four seasons. Bryson Stott and Brandon Marsh would’ve had more homers in said world in three of the past four. Why is Schwarber different?
If you looked closely at the table above (and I’m not offended if you didn’t), you may have noticed that the rightmost column is labeled Adjusted xHR. Specifically, Statcast adjusts for environmental effects. Wind, temperature, so on and so forth. Statcast also provides Standard xHR, which does not take environmental effects into account— just the dimensions of the park. And if we look at that…
…we see that, absent the effects of wind and weather, our hypothetical Oops! All CBP! Schwarber would’ve hit more homers than the actual Schwarber did in three of the past four seasons. We know that batters at Citizens Bank Park are particularly likely to lose homers to the wind, so that makes sense. But it can’t entirely explain what we’re seeing here. After all, Harper, Stott, and Marsh are all playing with the same wind, and they still benefited, homer-wise, by putting all of their batted balls in CBP even when adjusting for the impact of the wind. The left-handed hitters that stepped into CBP presumably lost some homers to the wind, but not enough to stop it from being the best park for hitting left-handed four-baggers by Park Factors . There isn’t any immediate reason to think Schwarber would be more impacted by wind than other lefties. So while the wind is clearly taking a few homers from his already lofty totals, it can’t provide the entirety of the explanation we’re looking for.
There’s two things you need for a cheapie homer: a park that offers an easier path to homer-dom to batted balls hit in a particular direction, and a ball that’s borderline enough to benefit from that benevolence. No matter what the park dimensions are, a ball that’s hammered deep into the cheap seats isn’t a cheapie. It’s just a regular homer. You know what Kyle Schwarber does? Hit the ball so damn hard that the dimensions of the stadium don’t seem to matter much. Maybe he’s not getting too many cheapie homers at CBP, actual or expected, because he’s just hitting the ball so hard.
Statcast divides any batted ball that would’ve been a homer in at least one stadium into three categories: Doubters (homers in 1 to 7 parks), Mostly Gone (homers in 8 to 29 parks), and No Doubters (gone in every park, and also fans of Gwen Stefani’s earlier work). In 2025, Schwarber’s No Doubter rate was 51.7%. Contrast with Harper’s, 29.6%, Stott’s 30.8%, or Marsh’s 27.3%. That suggests that part of the reason why that trio benefitted more from CBP’s dimensions than Schwarber over the past four seasons is that Schwarber is smacking the ball so hard that the lefty-friendly wall depth just isn’t as meaningful for him. He’s not putting as many balls in that borderline range where the helping hand of the bandbox-style park makes the difference. Not much in baseball can be explained by a single factor; there are certainly other things going on here as well. Pure variance is probably part of it. After all, the dimensions of the ballpark are still helping him; he’d have fewer homers if he called most other parks home.
We can conclude with the following Phacts about Schwarber:
- Playing his home games at CBP really does help Schwarber hit more home runs.
- But the benefit of CBP’s dimensions is somewhat blunted by the park’s strong winds.
- He hits the ball so hard and so far that the dimensions of the park may not be quite as impactful on his homer totals as they are for other lefties.
Everyone loves a discount. But Kyle won’t be clipping coupons for BOGO blasts anytime soon.
