Can Kyle Schwarber hit 500 home runs? It’s not that far-fetched. Here’s how he can get there.

It begins with hacks off a tee and swats at underhand flips from a coach. Next up: batting practice on the field. Then, depending on the day, curveballs from a calibrated machine or cranked-up fastballs.

And that’s all before a game.

So, how many swings does Kyle Schwarber take per day?

“Oh boy,” Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long said this week. “I think you’re safe to say it’s in the 200 range. It’s over 100 just from me. Easy.”

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It’s been this way since at least 2021. Schwarber signed a one-year, prove-it contract with the Nationals after getting cast aside by the Cubs and asked Long, then a coach in Washington, to help make him a better hitter.

Day after day, for most of five seasons and across two organizations, their mission hasn’t changed. You might guess, then, that pupil and coach would’ve basked in the moment this week at Coors Field in Denver after Schwarber became the 163rd player in major league history to reach 300 home runs.

“There was no real celebratory drink or anything like that,“ Long said. ”There was a hug, and it was like, ‘OK, tomorrow let’s get after it.’ We’re looking at it as a very amazing number — 300. But I guess we know it’s not the finished number. We’re looking forward to more.”

How does 500 sound?

“It’s a little daunting when you think about 500,” Long said. “But I think it’s a fair number.”

OK, before you go calling him crazy, know this: Long has actually done the arithmetic. Grab a pencil and paper and see if you can follow along.

“Say he hits 30 more this year,” Long said, a conservative estimate considering Schwarber entered Memorial Day weekend with 17 homers and was on pace for 55. “Then he’s sitting at 330. He signs another three-, four-year deal. He averages 30 for those, so that’s 120. He’s at 450. You’re probably talking about six years. He’s going to have to play until he’s 38. Can he do that?”

Let’s pause. Schwarber is 32. Through Thursday, he hit 148 homers, slugged .496, and had an .845 OPS in 2,299 plate appearances since signing a four-year, $79 million contract with the Phillies in 2022. In his previous 2,301 plate appearances, from 2017 to 2021 (age 24 to 28), his power numbers were nearly identical: 137 homers, .495 slugging, .837 OPS.

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With Schwarber in the final year of his contract and seeking another big free-agent payday, the Phillies will surely break out their actuarial tables to determine if he can keep up the pace for another four years. There’s little denying, though, that he’s a more complete hitter now than he was before arriving in Philadelphia.

And it’s worth noting that 10 members of the 500-homer club hit No. 500 in their age-38 season or older, including David Ortiz, whose late-30s surge as a designated hitter could augur well for Schwarber. (More on that later.)

OK, back to Long: “The training staff, the medical staff, the nutritionists, the massage therapists, all that stuff plays into this, and we have an absolutely fantastic group of people that help him in that aspect. It’s going to take work, it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take his body responding the right way. So, we’ll see.

“But [500] is not as far-fetched as maybe we think.”

Especially because Schwarber is improving with age.

Schwarber made his major league debut on June 16, 2015, 12 months after the Cubs drafted him fourth overall out of college.

By the end of 2016, he was a Chicago folk hero.

But despite tearing up his left knee, returning six months later, and going 7-for-17 in the Cubs’ hex-breaking World Series triumph, he eventually reached a career crossroads.

The strikeouts began piling up. The batting average and OPS plummeted, bottoming out at .188 and .701 in the abbreviated 2020 season. He lacked a position (the DH wouldn’t come to the National League until 2022).

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Oh, and Schwarber couldn’t hit lefties, either.

The Cubs cut him loose in December 2020 rather than hiking his salary through arbitration. As soon as he caught on with the Nationals, he got an introductory text message from Long, who was already chock-full of ideas.

Long, 58, has a soft spot for left-handed hitters who struggle against same-side pitching. Maybe it’s because he batted left-handed during an eight-year minor league career. Surely, he can empathize.

“It’s usually the lefties that get benched, you know?” Long said. “Because righty-on-righty, those [hitters] have been doing it their whole life. Lefty-on-lefty, you’re going to see 30% lefties. That’s it.”

But Long also believes that lefty-on-lefty success is about more than merely reps. It takes work. In 2010, with the Yankees, he worked with outfielder Curtis Granderson, a .210 hitter with a .614 OPS against lefties to that point.

“It’s taking a defensive hitter and turning him into an offensive hitter, and how do you do that?” Long said. “You have to design drills. The effort and time that you’re going to have to put in is an extra 200 swings a day. It’s a lot. Some guys are willing to do it, some guys aren’t.

“In Granderson’s case, he blew out my left elbow.”

Seriously. Long threw so many pitches to Granderson that he tore a ligament and underwent Tommy John surgery. Worth it? Well, Granderson batted .272 with a .944 OPS against lefties in 2011.

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In Schwarber, Long found an equally willing pupil.

“His numbers were glaring against lefties,” Long said. “He didn’t deserve to play against them. And I think there was the honesty factor where he said, ‘They pinch-hit for me all the time. I’m never going to get better if I don’t get a chance.’ Well, the chances were given to him and he didn’t capitalize.

“So, this is the predicament you’re in. How do you get out of it? You have to get to work. And he did it. He deserves all the credit, because he set out and he was on a mission.”

One of the earliest changes: Schwarber’s stance.

Long’s son, Jaron, pitched at Ohio State and faced Schwarber at Indiana. Jaron recalled that Schwarber bent his knees, almost in a crouch. With the Cubs, he became more upright.

“We went back and looked at his Indiana stuff, and I’m like, ‘Dude, you were [using] your legs. Why did you get away from that?’” Long recalled. “He said, ‘Well, I was told that you can’t hit that way in pro ball.’ And I said, ‘Well, I think we need to get back to that.’”

It enabled Schwarber to get a better look at pitches from lefties, against whom he batted .197 with a .649 OPS through six major league seasons. In 2021, he hiked those numbers to .268 and .788.

There were other adjustments. Some worked, some didn’t. The Nationals traded Schwarber to the Red Sox at the deadline in 2021, but he reunited with Long in Philadelphia and struggled against lefties in 2022 and 2023.

Back to the drawing board. Long devised new drills to make Schwarber more comfortable in the box against lefties. For one thing, they angled a pitching machine to replicate the action of various pitches. Schwarber learned to hang in better, especially against fastballs on his hands.

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The result: Since the start of last season, Schwarber was batting .301 with a .971 OPS in 331 plate appearances against lefties entering the weekend. He’s actually had more difficulty with righties (.219, .823 in 579 plate appearances).

Guess what Long and Schwarber are working on now.

“We videotaped it, and clear as day, you could see vs. lefties that I’m getting more down and prepared to make a good decision,” Schwarber said. “That isn’t the same vs. righties. I need to put myself in that headspace of, ‘Take it as if you’re facing a left-handed pitcher. Be ready, and go from there.’

“I’m going to keep trying to make adjustments on a yearly basis, and hopefully those adjustments keep getting me better and better and better. It’s kind of flipping the script to where, with age comes a decline, right? I want it to be the opposite way.”

Name these sluggers, based on power numbers through their age-31 seasons:

The first player is David Ortiz, the quintessential DH of the 2000s (non-Shohei Ohtani division). Big Papi was in the midst of a nice career through 2007, but considering he hit more than half of his 541 homers after turning 32, his Hall of Fame candidacy didn’t pick up steam until the back nine.

“David’s numbers when he was young were really good, but the older he got, the better a hitter he thought he became,” said Phillies hitting advisor Greg Colbrunn, who coached Ortiz in Boston for two seasons. “Did he have the same bat speed as he had at 23-24? Probably not. But the older he got, the smarter he got about all the pitchers, how they’re going to attack you. It was unbelievable. Schwarber’s doing the same thing.”

Which brings us to Player B. Schwarber is ahead of Ortiz’s home-run pace through age 32 with no sign of letting up. His average bat speed (76.6 mph, according to Statcast) is consistent with last year (77.5) and 2023 (77.1). His hard-hit rate, defined as the percentage of batted balls with an exit velocity of at least 95 mph, is 59.5%, up from 55.5% last year and 48.8% in 2023.

Ortiz often told Colbrunn that watching Manny Ramírez helped make him a better hitter. Schwarber has likely benefited from being around Bryce Harper. Schwarber has evolved in many of the same ways as Ortiz, who improved against lefties and used all fields en route to averaging 31 homers per year from ages 32 to 40.

Historically, non-athletic power hitters don’t age gracefully. But Ortiz’s longevity was aided by being a full-time DH. Schwarber could reap a similar benefit. If anything, the biggest impediment to Schwarber’s quest for 500 may be a potential work stoppage that could threaten to shorten or cancel the 2027 season.

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It’s unprecedented for a 33-year-old DH to receive a $100 million contract. And if Schwarber gets to free agency, the Phillies will surely make him a qualifying offer, which could affect his market.

But if you’re wagering that Schwarber can keep producing into his 30s, Long believes the foundation they have set is long-lasting.

“There’s a lot of good stuff that he’s done with his swing that, in my opinion, it’s set for life,” Long said. “Or however long he wants to play.”

Maybe even long enough to get to 500 homers.

“I always make the joke, ‘I’ll get 200 more and I can quit,’” Schwarber said. “There [are] a lot of things that have got to go right.”