Collette Calls: Hot Summers

Last week, I looked back at recent history of players reaching 20 homers before June 1 in attempt to forecast what the rest of the season could look like for Cal Raleigh, Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge. This week, I would like to take that approach from a different angle: what have we previously seen from sluggers in the hot summer months?

Since 2002, we have seen at least one player hit 30 or more home runs after June 1 with two exceptions: the obvious exception of 2020 as well as the 2014 season. In fact, we have seen multiple players accomplish this feat in each of the previous five full seasons:

The past few seasons have not been as robust as the pre-Mitchell Report era nor the bookending seasons around the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, but we have had multiple players accomplish this more often than not in recent seasons. There have been 85 instances of players hitting 30 or more homers after June 1 since the 2002 season, but those instances are shared amongst just 58 players. There are a select few who have done so in repeated seasons:

That list is peppered with a few Hall of Famers and others with the statistics to be in the Hall, as well as Mark Reynolds, who accomplished the feat at the pre-humidor Chase Field as well as in the old dimensions of Camden Yards. I suspect none of us are otherwise surprised by any player on that list and have fond memories of them helping our previous fantasy or real-life teams to past glories. I am actually more suprised by the fact names such as Adam Dunn, Carlos Delgado, Frank Thomas and Gary Sheffield only have one such hot summer stretch on their impressive resumes. 

My focus this week is not on the repeat offenders, but rather some of the circumstances which led to some of the one and done players on the list. The point of showing the list above is to show just how tough it is for players to accomplish the feat of 30 homers over the summer months to help set expectations for your current favorite slugger and cut off any potential wishcasting for help that may never arrive. However, that does not mean we should not be on the lookout for conditions which have previously led to some surprising hot summers from sluggers. Let's look at some previous examples in chronological order.

Jeff Kent - 2002

Maybe we can chalk this one up to the climate in San Francisco warming up in the summer. Better yet, the fact Kent hit 26 of these 30 homers after June 27, when Dusty Baker flipped Barry Bonds and Kent in the batting order. Hitting in front of the scariest hitter on the planet provided Kent with a lot of pitches in the zone and he hit .322/.374/.642 once that chance was made over the final 81 games of the season.

Javy Lopez - 2003

This was truly impressive, because Lopez was doing this while playing catcher full-time in the oppressive heat of Atlanta during the summer. Lopez was also in a walk year and departed for Baltimore after this season. He went on to hit just 44 more home runs over the final three seasons of his career before calling it quits in 2006.

Lance Berkman - 2006

Berkman hit his homers all throughout the season, but ramped it up over the summer. 40 of his 45 homers came from the left side of the plate, so it wasn't as if he was just aiming for the Crawford Boxes, and his home/road homer splits ended up at 24/21 on the season. The only month in which he had double-digit homers was the first month of the season, so consistency won out here more than anything.

Jermaine Dye - 2006

This season was Dye's second with the White Sox and August was the only month in which he reached double-digit homers, but he also never hit fewer than five homers in any month of the season. He is the first batter on this list so far whose home run to fly ball rate fell after a hot start, and yet Dye still finished with a career-best 44 homers on the season. 

Carlos Pena - 2007

Pena pulled this off for a 70-92 Devil Rays team, and the argument could be made teams simply pitched to him because they did not care enough to pitch around him. Pena had previously hit as many as 27 homers in a season in 2004, but nobody saw this coming in 2007 as he began a three-year run of production that Art Howe could rub in Billy Beane's face if Moneyball was remade. 

Brian Dozier - 2016

Note the sizable gap in years here, because from 2008-2015, the list of players was all the previously discussed usual suspects. It took until 2016 for us to be truly surprised again, and in a big way. Dozier limped into June with 5 homers and a .202 batting average, but he went on an absolute tear down the stretch with 13 August homers and 10 more in the month of September. The same flyballs that weren't traveling well early rarely stayed in the park late. 

Salvador Perez - 2021

This one was impressive, because Kansas City isn't a favorable power park, but Perez made it look small in the summer of 2021. Like Dozier, August and September were big months for Perez as he hit 22 homers over the course of those two months. The fact the team allowed him to play 23 games at first base helped keep some of the pressure off his legs at the catching position. Those looking to take the over on Cal Raleigh getting to 50 this season should be buoyed by this data point, but it's unlikely Raleigh takes too much time off behind the dish in Seattle.

Brandon Lowe - 2021

Lowe had a 19/20 split on his home/road homer splits and never had a single month of double-digit homers that summer, hitting anywhere from six to nine homers each of the final four months of the season. He got particularly flyball happy over the summer, and one of every four flyballs he hit became a souvenir. 

Overall, these players either saw a higher percentage of flyballs go over the fence as the season went on or tilted the scale in their favor by increasing their flyball percentage. The latter is not a controllable skill, while increased flyball rates only guarantee an increased opportunity for homers. These players played in warm climates as well as indoors, but we are also dealing with a different baseball these days as was discussed last week. The expected home run leaderboard does not exactly show anyone jumping off the chart these days, as Willson Contreras is currently leading that particular list, but seeing Rafael Devers there in the top 10 is intriguing as well. There's no guarantee anyone is hitting 30 homers this summer, but be on the lookout for those at least increasing their flyball tendencies or getting on an early heater such as Jo Adell, who already has five homers in June after hitting five in the entire month of May and is once again teasing us with his potential.