Schwarber's 459-Foot Bomb Caps Stunning Ninth-Inning Comeback

Down four runs heading into the ninth, Philadelphia erupted for six runs without recording an out to steal a 6-4 win over St. Louis on August 23. Kyle Schwarber put the exclamation point on it with a 459-foot home run to center that turned a tie game into a two-run lead Philadelphia never surrendered.

St. Louis looked like it had this one locked up from the jump. Alec Burleson did the early damage, singling to center in the first to score Wetherholt, then singling to right in the fourth to push the lead to 2-0. Jose Fermín made it a three-run game in the fifth with a 397-foot homer to left center, and Wetherholt added another RBI single in the seventh to plate Urías and push St. Louis to 4-0. For eight innings, Kyle Leahy and the Cardinals' bullpen had Philadelphia's offense completely handcuffed — Leahy himself allowed just 2 hits over 4 scoreless innings.

Then the ninth inning happened. Edmundo Sosa cracked a double to left that scored Crawford, Harper, and Realmuto in one swing, cutting the deficit to 4-3. That alone was remarkable. But De La Cruz followed with a single to left to score Sosa and tie it at four — the play that swung Philadelphia's win probability from 14% to 57%, a 44-point shift in a single at-bat. The Cardinals were suddenly on the wrong end of a collapse. Then Schwarber stepped in and ended any remaining drama, launching a 459-foot shot to center that scored De La Cruz and made it 6-4. Six runs, one inning, game over.

The story of the night was the contrast between how Cristopher Sanchez pitched and how Philadelphia won anyway. Sanchez gave up 9 hits and 4 earned runs over 6.2 innings — not a performance that looks like a winning effort on paper — but Tim Mayza came on and threw 1.1 scoreless innings to bridge the gap to the ninth. Sosa finished 2-for-4 with 3 RBI and appears to have been the catalyst that made everything possible. De La Cruz went 2-for-4 with an RBI of his own. St. Louis got contributions across the lineup — Burleson, Wetherholt, and Fermín all had multi-hit or multi-RBI nights — but none of it held up when the ninth inning arrived. Philadelphia's offense looked dormant for eight frames and then detonated all at once, which is either a testament to the lineup's depth or a warning sign for any team that thinks a four-run lead is safe late.