Baseball is rife with sluggers these days, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to guess who will lead the Majors in homers in any given year.
Entering 2020, Luke Voit was on the heels of a season in which he hit 21 homers in 118 games. Then, in ‘20, he hit 22 in 56 games to lead the Majors. In 2019, Pete Alonso led the Majors — in his first season in the big leagues.
That just makes predicting the 2021 home run leader even more fun. MLB.com enlisted five writers to pick 10 contenders to be 2021’s Major League home run king — with each making a pick in each league.
Mike Trout — CF, Angels
2019 total: 45 / ‘20 total: 17
Any time you have a chance to take Mike Trout to lead the Majors in pretty much any offensive category, you simply have to take him — those are the rules, as long as the best player in the game is in his prime, like he is now. Somehow, Trout has never led MLB in homers, which makes it even easier to envision the likely future Hall of Famer doing so at some point before all is said and done. Trout’s career high in home runs was 45 in 2019, the last time we saw a season of more than 60 games, when he played only 134 games due to injury. That’s a 54-homer pace over 162 games.
The power is very much there: Trout’s 93.7 mph average exit velocity in 2020 was third-highest among batters with at least 100 batted balls. He made hard contact on 21.6% of his swings, which ranked fifth among that same group. And the power absolutely translates into home runs. Trout has 302 career homers, and 297 of those have been since he returned to the Majors for good in 2012. The only players with more homers since ‘12 are Nelson Cruz (311) and Edwin Encarnación (307).
Eloy Jiménez — LF, White Sox
2019 total: 31 / ‘20 total: 14
I was really hoping (somewhat foolishly perhaps?) that Trout would fall to me at No. 2, but with the perennial MVP candidate off the board, I’ll happily take Jiménez in this spot. There’s just so much to like about the White Sox phenom. He clubbed 31 homers in just 122 games as a rookie in 2019, then maintained that pace with 14 home runs in only 55 games (while increasing his OPS from .828 to .891) in the shortened ’20 season. No sophomore slump. No drop-off due to the unusual circumstances brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Put it all together and Jiménez has racked up 45 home runs in just 177 career games — a 41-homer pace over a 162-game season. He also led the American League with an 11.5 barrel percentage last season, while his 55.7 hard-hit percentage was second only to Miguel Sanó. Oh, and have I mentioned that Jiménez is only 24 years old?
Jiménez only seems to be getting better, plus it certainly doesn’t hurt that he’ll be batting in the middle of one of the most potent lineups in the Majors, likely slotting in right behind reigning AL MVP José Abreu. Jiménez figures to get plenty of pitches to hit, making 40 homers a very realistic milestone.
Teoscar Hernández — OF, Blue Jays
2019 total: 26 / ‘20 total: 16
Maybe Toronto’s Statcast darling is more of a fastball hunter than a complete hitter, but a Statcast darling Hernández remains — and he dazzled me enough last year to convince me that he’s turned a corner. Hernández has the top-end exit velocity of the Stantons, Judges and Sanós of the world (we’re serious: he tied teammate Vladimir Guerrero Jr. for the eighth-hardest hit homer of 2020, and has put up 10 110-plus mph homers in the last two seasons), and, more importantly for this pick, he’s a natural at squaring up consistently. Hernández’s 18% barrel rate last year was MLB’s fourth best, and his roughly 15% barrel rate dating back to his 2017 debut puts him with the big boys in the top 10.
If last summer was an indication, Hernández has learned how to lay off some of the breaking balls he might never really handle and give himself more chances to mash. The Blue Jays’ crowded outfield mix gives me a moment of pause, but at…
Read More: 2021 home run king? Here are 10 guesses