ORLANDO, Fla. — Designated hitters don’t get paid $30 million a year. You know that, right? Not unless they also pitch in their spare time and their name rhymes with “Bomani,” anyway.

But now, for the rest of baseball time, that will no longer be true. That’s because a Ruthian dude named Kyle Schwarber just changed everything.

On a Tuesday morning he’ll never forget, the Schwarbino agreed to return to the Phillies – for a deal worth $150 million over the next five years, according to multiple industry sources. Since we never promised there would be no math, that works out to $30 million a year, for a fellow who will turn 33 before next Opening Day.

That’s the largest contract ever for a designated hitter — no matter how you calculate this stuff. And it isn’t even close.

No true DH had ever raked in a deal worth 20 million bucks a year, let alone 30. The old record was held by Astros masher Yordan Alvarez, who got an average annual value of $19.2 million, but he was still three years away from free agency when he signed that deal before the 2023 season. And if you’re wondering about David Ortiz, the most he ever made was $16 million, in his final two seasons (2015 and ’16).

Only 14 other active position players currently have contracts averaging at least $30 million a year — although “active” seems like a funny word to use to describe Anthony Rendon. You know what crazy thing those other 14 guys all have in common? They all wear gloves pretty much every day, with the exception of that Shohei Ohtani guy, who isn’t so much a “position player” as he is a superhero freak from the mysterious planet Ohtanus.

But now this man, Kyle Joseph Schwarber, has changed the world and changed the value of his profession. If you’re someone who spends too much time staring at the wins above replacement column, that probably makes no sense to you. But judging by what the Phillies just paid him, never has a player’s WAR valuation told us less about his real value in the real world.

If you take a trip down Baseball Reference’s active WAR leaderboard, it’ll take you a while to find Schwarber’s name. He’s all the way down at No. 70 on that list, with 19.9 bWAR (in 11 seasons).

So why the heck would any team make the allegedly 70th “best” player in baseball one of the 17 highest-paid position players in the sport? I think the Phillies are trying to tell us something.

They’re telling us he’s the central character on their entire roster. They’re telling us they don’t see a path to winning without him. They’re telling us he’s the handyman who fuses all their other parts together.

They’re telling us, as he comes off an electrifying 56-homer season, they expect him to zoom up the Phillies’ all-time home run list and possibly into the 500-Homer Club. They’re telling us that in the toughest sports town in America, they can’t find a soul who doesn’t love this man, not just in their dugout but also in the cheesesteak line at Angelo’s.

So why has there never been a contract like this? Possibly because it’s practically impossible to find another player quite like this.

Unique contracts are given out only to unique humans. And come to think of it, that’s a good explanation for why the Phillies let Schwarber take a spin around the free-agent auction house in the first place — because there was literally no player like him. So they had no idea what or whom to compare him to.

What was he worth? There was only one way to find out. And now we know.

So what is it about this guy? Why did he just blow that ginormous hole in all the baseball mathematicians’ WAR per dollar formulas? Let’s delve into that.

He’s a legend

Kyle Schwarber celebrates after his swing-off heroics earned him All-Star MVP honors. (Jamie Squire / Getty Images)

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have thought to drop that word, legend, on a player like this. But in Schwarber’s case, I didn’t invent it. I actually stole it — from the Marlins’ Kyle Stowers.

Let’s roll back the clock to this summer’s All-Star Game. Remember who the MVP of that game was? Right. A man named Schwarber, which was kind of interesting considering the box score still tells us he went hitless in that game!

But did he, though? Remember how that All-Star Game was decided? It was tied after regulation, so it was settled with a penalty-kick shootout — wait, I mean a spur-of-the-moment mini-home run derby. And who took over that little swat-off? Who else? The Schwarbino.

He got three swings. One of them landed over the center-field fence. Another was a ridiculous 461-foot space shuttle that almost cleared the upper deck in right-center field. The third was a down-to-one-knee Reggie Jackson special that roared into the Chop House out in right field in Atlanta. And this game … was … over.

As we watched his teammates shower Schwarber with hugs, love and admiration that night, it was a vivid reminder of how the sport views him. Hitch your trailer to the Kyle Schwarber Express, and amazing things seem to happen. Just ask Stowers.

“The guy’s already a legend,” Stowers said that night. “This just adds to it.”

He’s a historian

It’s always hard to predict how any player is going to produce in his age-33, -34, -35, -36 or -37 seasons. But certain types of hitters age better than others. And the Phillies have done projections that suggest Schwarber just might be one of those hitters.

Over the last four years … only one man in baseball has hit more home runs than the 187 Schwarber has launched since he signed with the Phillies in 2022. That would be Aaron Judge, with 210. Schwarber is tied for second-most with Ohtani. Pete Alonso is a distant third, with 158. Which means …

Watch out, Babe Ruth … Let’s just say Schwarber has another season in him like the 56-homer show he put on in 2025. Here is where he would stand on the all-time list of most home runs by a player in his first five seasons with a team (hat tip: Sarah Langs of MLB.com):

Schwarber, Phillies — 243
Babe Ruth, Yankees  — 235
Mark McGwire (Cardinals) — 220

But even if Schwarber hits “only” the 47 bombs he has averaged per year as a Phillie, he would be right on the Babe’s heels, with 234. Heck, if he hits “only” 34, he would still pass McGwire to rank second all-time on a very cool list. But also …

Club 500 is on his radar… Schwarber has already smoked 340 homers through his age-32 season. So the 500-Homer Club could be in reach of a guy like this. To add another 160 homers, he would need to average 32 trots a season over the life of this deal to make it to 500. But for what it’s worth, he has hit at least 32 in the last six full seasons in a row.

On the other hand, no active player has hit 160 or more from age 33 on. But you don’t have to look too far back in time to find players who have hit that many. If we start that clock in 2010, Carlos Beltrán, Albert Pujols, Adrián Beltré and Nelson Cruz have all done it.

And a recent study by analytically savvy baseball writer Travis Sawchik, at mlb.com, suggested that elite 30-something DHs tend to remain more productive from age 33 on than nearly any other group.

I know one thing. Schwarber’s fellow big boppers don’t think his power and productivity are about to tumble over any cliffs.

“He’s dangerous,” Alonso said, after the All-Star Game in July. “He’s always dangerous. He’s never not dangerous. It doesn’t matter how he’s feeling or how he’s performing. Whenever he steps in the box, he’s always dangerous.”

So if that’s the case …

He’s also heading for Phillies history … He spent the first six seasons of his career as a Cub. But now, with this contract, Schwarber has put himself in position to go down as an all-time Phillies icon. Starting with this:

He’s almost a lock to land in the top three home run hitters in franchise history. Here’s that current top three:

Mike Schmidt — 548
Ryan Howard — 382
Del Ennis — 259

So it would take only another 73 home runs for Schwarber to pull into third place on that list. At his current clip, he’d get there sometime in June 2027 — health and labor peace willing. He’d have to average 39 a year over the life of the contract to pass Howard, which seems challenging. But let’s think about this another way.

Assuming Schwarber finishes out this contract as a Phillie, he’ll be in rarified air, because he’ll have played nine seasons as a Phillie. The free-agent era began 50 seasons ago. And in all that time, no free agent signed by the Phillies has had a run that long. In fact, the current record is held by …

The guy who sits a few locker stalls down from Schwarber, Bryce Harper.

Harper somehow just finished his seventh season as a Phillie — and boy, that went by fast. So Schwarber, Harper and Trea Turner (who just finished Year 3 of an 11-year deal) are all carving a place in Phillies history — on pace to become the longest-tenured free agents in the life of their franchise.

So kick this around. Five years ago, Schwarber was non-tendered by the Cubs. Today, he’s the highest-paid free agent ever. And let’s say this one more time. It’s for reasons …

Bigger than the metrics

Schwarber actually rejoined one other team in the past week: He’ll be back on Team USA in the upcoming World Baseball Classic.

On Tuesday, the manager of that team, Mark DeRosa, didn’t hide the fact that he’d campaigned relentlessly to bring Schwarber back. The reason told us everything we needed to know — about the man and why the Phillies paid him the way they did.

“He was the chemistry guy for me,” DeRosa said. “He was the guy. Listen, there’s nerves in there. I don’t care how good a player you are, when you walk in a room full of superstars and then the eyes of the world are on you, and there’s pressure to perform in front of the greats. He attacks it so differently. (When) he’s in the dugout, (he makes) everyone relax. … There’s just no panic with this guy.”

That’s more than leadership, DeRosa said. That’s just the ability to “relax everybody.”

“I think it just goes to how confident he is as a player, and as a hitter, and how great a guy he is,” DeRosa said. “I mean, he’s got that football mentality. He was a linebacker in high school. He brings it right into the clubhouse. He’s an infectious personality, and everyone loves him, and he backs it up.”

Six decades ago, two poets named Lennon and McCarthy combined to write a tune called “Can’t Buy Me Love.” But on Tuesday, the Phillies might have proved them wrong. They bought themselves all the brotherly love that history’s first $30-million-a-year DH can spread, from the batter’s box at Citizens Bank Park to the hoagie counter at Wawa.