Baltimore Orioles first baseman Chris Davis hit 53 home runs in 2013. It was the first 50-homer season since Toronto’s Jose Bautista belted 54 in 2010 and no other player has topped 47 round-trippers since 2008. With Major League Baseball cracking down on performance enhancing drugs and bullpens being used more strategically than ever, it may be unlikely we ever see a player approach 60 or 70 home runs in a season again. However, a 50 home run season still feels like it is in the realm of possibility and it is hard not to wonder who it might come from.
Davis is still a candidate, as is his teammate Mark Trumbo — who blasted a league-leading 47 home runs last season. Aside from that, logical candidates would include Oakland’s Khris Davis, Washington’s Bryce Harper, Chicago’s Kris Bryant and Miami’s Giancarlo Stanton if he could stay healthy for a full season.
Although Brian Dozier led the Minnesota Twins with 42 home runs last season, his teammate Miguel Sano may be the most logical choice on the team to reach the 50 home run plateau.
In a strange 2016 where he started the season in the outfield and missed all of June with a hamstring injury, Sano still managed to 25 home runs in just 116 games. Even though he struck out in 36 percent of his plate appearances, Sano homered at a pace that would have put him around 35 over 162 games.
Back at what appears to be his natural position (third base,) Sano appears a little more comfortable at the plate. The strikeout percentage is down slightly at 33.8 percent, but his walk rate has nearly doubled to 21.5 percent and his ISO of .353 and hard-contact rate of 51.7 percent have been out of this world. Through the first 15 games of the season, Sano has four long balls which (incredibly small sample size alert) puts him on pace for 43 this season.
Trimming the strikeout rate a little more would be ideal, but it should not be the Twins biggest concern if Sano is hitting the ball this hard when he does make contact. The walk rate indicates he is seeing the ball better and has a better approach at the plate.
The numbers above are impressive, but how do they compare to other sluggers across the league? Let’s take a look at how Sano’s career numbers stack up against Stanton and the retired David Ortiz — a pair of great hitters with a similar build to Sano.
Miguel Sano
16.3 AB/HR
.248 ISO
41.9 HC percent
.495 SLG
0.38 BB/K
Giancarlo Stanton
14.3 AB/HR
.272 ISO
42.1 HC percent
.538 SLG
0.41 BB/K
David Ortiz
16.0 AB/HR
.265 ISO
45.9 HC %
.552 SLG
0.75 BB/K
The criteria is somewhat stacked against Sano, since he has played just over 200 career games and is being compared against the 27-year-old Stanton and the future first-ballot Hall of Famer in Ortiz, but his career numbers are not too far off the other sluggers. Sano’s walk-to-strikeout rate is similar to Stanton’s, as is his hard contact rate and he homers at nearly the same rate Ortiz did during his career.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytlYb_iEUZI&t=14s
Breaking the numbers down further, Ortiz did not exceed a .241 ISO in his time with the Twins and did not do so until his first season in Boston when he was 27 years old. Stanton “failed” to have a hard contact rate of 40 percent in two of his first four seasons. Sano posted a .260 ISO in his first partial season with the Twins and has been over 40 percent hard contact during each of his first two partial seasons in the big leagues.
Finally, playing half of his games in a full season at Target Field should help Sano. Since the beginning of 2014, Target Field has allowed the ninth most home runs to left field by right-handed batters in the MLB. So far during his career, Sano’s power has been evenly spread out, with 23 homers at home and 24 on the road, though he does have 15 more extra base hits and is hitting .019 points higher in five fewer career home games than road games.
Sano has the strength and raw power to be baseball’s next 50-homer guy and he is playing at a ballpark that would allow it to happen. Whether or not he reaches that level or not remains to be seen, but Sano is already showing the potential to become one of baseball’s next big sluggers.
