Collette Calls: 20 and Counting

We are already a full third of the way through the baseball season, and the calendar flipped to June over the weekend. The season has been full of surprises and disappointments, but it has already produced something we have not seen since 1996: at least three players with 20 homers before June 1st. I mentioned this on BlueSky on Saturday and one of my followers did the legwork to find the last time we have seen as many as three players with at least 20 homers before June 1st. Unsurprisingly, it came in 1996, a time when we know baseball was taking a Sergeant Schultz approach to performance enhacing drugs:

I do not feel that it's a productive exercise to go back to that era to see what might be possible, so instead I'm looking at the past 20 years to look at previous players who hit 20 or more homers before June 1 to see how those players did the rest of the season. Afterwards, I want to look at the three players who have accomplished the feat this season and project where they might finish the year.

2006: Albert Pujols and Jim Thome

Let's start with two Hall of Famers and blow the bell curve for everyone else! These two were crushing it out of the gate, but Pujols did not even match his homer total from the first two months over the final four, while Thome barely exceeded his. Each player had a 30 percent or greater home run to fly ball rate in their early hot starts, but Pujols finished the season with a 22.5 percent HR/FB rate while Thome finished at a 27.8 percent rate. 

2009: Adrian Gonzalez

Gonzalez raked for the first two months with 20 homers and one of the highest HR/FB rates in recent memory at 34.5 percent and, on paper, it appeared he was extending what he had done in 2008 when he finished the season with a 20.7 percent HR/FB rate. Gonzalez went on to double his homer total over the final four months and his HR/FB rate finished slightly higher than it did in 2009 at 22.2 percent. It was the last time that rate was above 17 percent in Gonzalez's career. 

2011: Jose Bautista

The tough part about this one was that these 20 homers came on the heels of Bautista's 54-homer breakout in 2010, so we were looking at a historic power surge as of June 1, 2011. Bautista's 30.3 percent HR/FB rate was not abnormally high (for him), but he too finished the season with a 22.5 percent HR/FB rate. His rate would never get that high again in his career, yet he still hit many homers from 2012-2015. 

2012: Josh Hamilton

This was Hamilton's career season. It was the only season in which he hit more than 32 homers and he appeared well on his way to hitting 50, at least on the surface. His 37.5 percent HR/FB rate was an early indicator that he was well out in front of his skis as his previos best was his rookie season in Cincinnati when he was at 24.4 percent. Hamlton finished the season with a career-best 25.6 percent HR/FB rate but predictably cooled off over those final four months.

2014: Nelson Cruz

Cruz had hit at least 20 homers in every season since joining the Rangers in 2009, but 2014 was the beginning of peak Cruz, as he hit at least 37 homers in five consecutive seasons. 2014 started off hot, with Cruz hitting 20 homers before the start of June thanks to a 28.6 percent HR/FB rate as he took full advantage of his new friendly park in Camden Yards in the one season he played for Baltimore. Despite playing a full season, Cruz cooled off and hit 20 the rest of the way and his HR/FB rate finished nearly right on his career average of 20.4 percent.

2019: Christian Yelich & Cody Bellinger

Given what we now know about the condition of the physical baseball in 2019, it's not surprising both of these players exceeded their early hot starts. It is also worth remembering they each owon the MVP award in their respective league. The sad part is that Yelich could have legimitately challenged 50 homers, because he only played in 79 games from June 1 through the end of the year and still hit .343/.436/.654 before a fractured knee cap in early September ended his season. His early 36.2 percent HR/FB rate only dropped to 30.3 percent the rest of the season, and Yelich repeated this effort in 2020 as well. Ironically, his current HR/FB rate is once again at 35 percent as he strategically hits flyballs, as his 59 percent groundball rate and 13 homers are an odd pairing in his current statistical line. 

Bellinger had a 29.9 percent mark, but that fell to 21.8 percent after June 1, yet he still hit more homers as he increased his percentage of flyballs. The 47 homers Bellinger finished with matched the total he would go on to hit from 2020-2022, and his early 2025 performance has left a lot to be desired for those who were imagining big numbers in a cozy Yankee Stadium. He is hitting flyballs at a career-best rate this season, but just 10 percent of them have left the yard as he seemingly hasn't been 100 percent all season. 

2023: Pete Alonso

Alonso's HR/FB rate was 26.7 percent as he came roaring out of the gates two years ago, which was not unusual considering his career rate is 21.9 percent. One of the few players on this report to exceed his early home run total, Alonso finished with 46 homers, as he didn't have the aid of the 2019 baseball to repeat a 50-homer season. It appears there are only two players in baseball who can hit 50 homers in a season without the aid of a homer-friendly baseball these days, and we're about to discuss both of them.

2024: Aaron Judge

Judge is a freak of nature. Nobody his size should be able to play the outfield and destroy baseballs as he does, but not only did Judge nearly double his early home run total, he was the only player on this list who also increased his HR/FB rate, as he took it from 26.7 percent before June 11 to 36.2 percent from June 1 through the end of the season. 

2025: Judge, Cal Raleigh, Shohei Ohtani

Seeing the other freak of nature on this list should not be a surprise, but Raleigh's presence is unexpected. Raleigh's power has always been legitimate, but Seattle turning into a hitter's park this season after forever being a place power went to die was not on many lists of expectations this offseason. He has the lowest of the three HR/FB rates of this trio at 28.7 percent, which is 10 points above his career rate and the first time he has ever been over 20 percent. It's worth remembering this is not your father's Safeco Field this season, so regression to his norms may not be as harsh as it could be for others. Raleigh is leaning into this new condition with his best flyball percentage since 2022. I still expect him to finish third on this list and perhaps lower once Kyle Schwarber gets on his normal summer heater, but it has been a fantastic fantasy story to date for The Big Dumper. 

Judge is mostly picking up where he left off. He currently has a 29.6 percent HR/FB rate, which is laughably below his career rate of 31.9 percent. His current flyball rate is not as high as some of his previous seasons, but we have previously seen him flip a switch and take off before. He is also doing this current power run while hitting .387. When Judge plays 150 games in a season, he hits 50-plus homers. If he stays on the field this season, I don't see how he fails to keep that streak going.

Ohtani, with his 31.9 percent HR/FB rate, has the second-best rate of his career since the 2022 season, which was his lowest home run output since 2021 despite him hitting in 157 games that season. Ohtani currently has a career-best 42.9 percent flyball rate, and that aforementioned HR/FB rate is only slightly higher than his career rate of 28.1 percent. We knew, a year removed from his improbable 50-50 season, that Ohtani would not run as much this year, but he appears determined to repeat 50 homers this season.

If you're looking for someone whose expected homers lag their current total in hopes of finding a hitter who could help assuage any potential power loss from these three or another source on your team, there are two names which pop off on the HR-xHR chart, but both have very similar conditions. Rafael Devers and Wilyer Abreu are both lefties who hit at Fenway, which does not play into their favor. Devers's 14.1 xHR exceeds his actual homers by two, while Abreu's 14.5 xHR exceeds his by just under two. I just would not expect many suprises this summer because the drag on the baseball is as high as it's ever been, and unless the league starts inserting bouncy balls into the core of the baseball, we are not going to see a sudden explosion of homers this summer: