Texas Rangers MVPs Ready to Best Judge, Ohtani as Homer Kings?
Who’s going to be the MLB home run leader in 2024? Could it be one of the Texas Rangers?
Any such projections are going to start with the game’s elite power hitters and those that have done so before. MLB.com did the exercise of identifying 10 candidates who could deep more than anyone else this season.
Aaron Judge (New York Yankees) and Shohei Ohtani (Los Angeles Dodgers) are the top two favorites for obvious reasons. Ronald Acuna Jr. (Atlanta Braves) makes sense at third. His teammates and last season’s overall long ball champ with 54 – Matt Olson – comes in fourth.
This is where it gets interesting for the reigning World Series champions. ALCS MVP Adolis García, who hit 37 homers last season to finish tied for seventh in MLB, was fifth on the website’s list. Per MLB.com:
Major League Baseball is currently spoiled with incredible power hitters, and García has more than earned the right to be counted among them. His 16.1% barrel rate in 2023 ranked seventh in MLB, barely behind Olson and Kyle Schwarber (47 HR in '23). He’s had no trouble converting on that raw power, either – his 39 homers last season gave him 97 since 2021, tied with Mookie Betts for the 11th-most over that span. Assuming good health in the future, it kind of feels like it’s only a matter of time before García makes good on this prediction.
The Rangers haven’t had a home run champ since Alex Rodriguez in the early 2000s. A-Rod lead the American League for three consecutive seasons (2001-03), with his 57 dingers in 2002 leading all of baseball. His 47 the following year tied for the overall lead.
As for 2024, García isn’t the only Ranger to bet on. MLB also provided five dark-horse options and World Series MVP Corey Seager made the cut.
Seager has hit 33 homers in each of the past two seasons. The difference between 2022 and ’23? He needed 116 fewer at-bats to do it in ’23. The Rangers shortstop had a career year despite being limited to 119 games by injury, setting career highs in RBIs (96), slugging percentage (.623) and OPS (1.013). If Seager, who finished runner-up to Ohtani in AL MVP Award voting, can stay on the field for 150 games or more in ’24, his trajectory suggests he could eclipse the 40-homer mark for the first time. As far as his home run ceiling goes, who knows?
Seager is currently on the mend again in spring training, but is expected to be back by Opening Day. García, also coming off an injury in the World Series, is taking it slow as workouts ramp up in Surprise, Ariz.
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