Cal Raleigh's 2026 season is going to be discussed all offseason as people try to figure out how someone goes from a historically amazing season to a historically poor season without an obvious injury. Perhaps more news will come out once the season is over that could explain away how Chandler Simpson nearly has more infield base hits than Raleigh has overall base hits on the season. This is also the second consecutive season where fantasy managers have seen a 40-plus homer guy follow up that season with a dreadful season the next year. How soon we forget that Anthony Santander was this story last year, as he hit 34 fewer home runs in 2025 than he had in 2024 after departing Baltimore for Toronto via free agency.
The two sluggers shared two traits: they each hit 40 homers in their breakout season, and they're also both switch hitters. That is where the similarities end between the two. Santander's 2025 season was greatly impacted when he collided with the outfield wall in late May, causing a partial dlslocation of his left shoulder. He was hitting .179/.273/.304 with six home runs in 209 plate appearances at the time of his acute injury, so the incident was not the cause of the struggles as much as relief for fantasy managers who could finally get rid of the disappointing slugger. Santander would go onto miss nearly the entire regular season, returning toward the end of September only to succumb to back troubles
Cal Raleigh's 2026 season is going to be discussed all offseason as people try to figure out how someone goes from a historically amazing season to a historically poor season without an obvious injury. Perhaps more news will come out once the season is over that could explain away how Chandler Simpson nearly has more infield base hits than Raleigh has overall base hits on the season. This is also the second consecutive season where fantasy managers have seen a 40-plus homer guy follow up that season with a dreadful season the next year. How soon we forget that Anthony Santander was this story last year, as he hit 34 fewer home runs in 2025 than he had in 2024 after departing Baltimore for Toronto via free agency.
The two sluggers shared two traits: they each hit 40 homers in their breakout season, and they're also both switch hitters. That is where the similarities end between the two. Santander's 2025 season was greatly impacted when he collided with the outfield wall in late May, causing a partial dlslocation of his left shoulder. He was hitting .179/.273/.304 with six home runs in 209 plate appearances at the time of his acute injury, so the incident was not the cause of the struggles as much as relief for fantasy managers who could finally get rid of the disappointing slugger. Santander would go onto miss nearly the entire regular season, returning toward the end of September only to succumb to back troubles which kept him out of most of their amazing run to the World Series. Santander would then require surgery to repair his labrum in early February and has missed all of 2026, with little hope of making it back this season.
Raleigh has only known Seattle and had the entire Pacific Northwest in the palm of his hand after his incredible 2025 season. His struggles have perpetuated all season, as it took him 15 games to hit his first home run of the season and 24 to get to even two homers on the season. Raleigh ended up hitting home runs in three consecutive contests from April 20 to April 22 but has gone onto to hit just 11 more while batting .154/.282/.316 since that mini hot streak in late April. Raleigh did go on the injured list for the first time in his entire career on May 14 with an oblique injury, which kept him off the major-league roster for a full month.
At least with Santander, we have a specific moment where we can look at to see where the power went, but not with Raleigh. His struggles came out of nowhere and have only gotten worse as the season has worn on. Shooters shoot their way out of slumps, but hitters have it much tougher than hoopsters firing a basketball into a stationary hoop. Raleigh has been out there facing ever-nastier stuff from pitchers around the league and has shown no signs of swinging his way out of this malaise.
Will Harris had an interesting graphic on BlueSky earlier this week showing how the struggling Raleigh and the surprising Liam Hicks compare to one another this season. We can see areas where one is doing decidedly better than the other, yet their outcomes could not be more wildly different:
It is something like this which should give Raleigh fantasy managers in keeper leagues some hope that he's not about to fall down a Mike Zunino production cliff. Those same managers could also look back to Chris Davis, who led the league with 53 home runs and a .286 batting average in 2013 and repeated as home run champ in 2015 while hitting .262. Those 100 homers over two seasons bookeneded a dreadful dropoff where Davis hit .196 with 26 home runs in the old Camden Yards dimensions.
Since baseball has a funny way of repeating itself, could we see a third consecutive season of someone with 40 or more home runs suffering a drastic production dropoff in the 2027 season? Aaron Judge and Juan Soto do not fit neatly into this discussion given their elite talents and track record, but they, too, are coming off 40-plus home run seasons and are falling well short of those levels this year due to injuries and some ineffectiveness. Marcell Ozuna comes close to making this cut with his 40 and 39-homer seasons in 2023 and 2024 followed by just 29 home runs since then.
We currently have 10 players with at least 30 home runs this season, nine of which could hit as many as 40 home runs should they have strong Septembers, with James Wood's oblique injury and the slowness of his return likely keeping him on the outside looking in:
- Kyle Schwarber: 39 home runs
- Matt Olson: 36 home runs
- Yordan Alvarez: 36 home runs
- Junior Caminero: 35 home runs
- Ben Rice: 34 home runs
- Hunter Goodman: 34 home runs
- Pete Crow-Armstrong: 33 home runs
- Pete Alonso: 30 home runs
- Shohei Ohtani: 30 home runs
- James Wood: 30 home runs
Schwarber has hit at least 38 home runs for five consecutive seasons and shows no signs of slowing down. Even in the season where he hit .197, he still managed to hit 47 home runs. The batting average variance has settled down in recent seasons, with Schwarber hitting at least .240 since overshifting rules were implmented, and it would take an injury as it did in 2021 to slow his roll down.
Olson has avoided the injured list every season since 2019 and has hit at least 29 home runs in every full season since 2018. He also enjoys the platoon advantage in most of his at-bats as a lefty playing in a friendly hitting environment in Atlanta.
Alvarez has enjoyed a tremendous bounceback season after his injury-marred 2025 season and is currently on pace to win the triple crown. It would be Alvarez's fifth season of 30-plus home runs and the third time he has hit at least .300 in a season. The only thing slowing down this run is a repeat of his lower leg troubles.
Caminero has youth on his side, unless he runs himself into the ground. He has yet to take a day off this entire season, even when Tampa Bay has had more comfortable leads within the division. He has already shown more plate discipline this season when the league has attempted to pitch around him.
Rice has youth and the benefits of playing in Yankee Stadium to help insulate him from power slumps. Yet Rice has a dead even split with his home runs this season while hitting nearly 30 points worse at home this year than on the road, making it a second straight season where his home batting average has been lower than his road one.
Goodman has already matched his 2025 strikeout total in 119 fewer plate appearances this season, but he has also surpassed last season's home run total by three. The Rockies are obviously fine with this tradeoff, but even Coors Field cannot totally offset the risks of a 30-plus homer season insulating Goodman from wild production swings.
Crow-Armstrong, after a slow start, has already repeated his 30-30 season and is pacing toward an MVP season leading the Cubs at the plate and in the field. He has tripled his walk rate this season, which has helped him improve his batting average as well. This appears to be another case where injury is the only way to derail this locomotive.
Ohtani's season at the plate has been disappointing, only because he has set such an impossibly high bar with his previous efforts. This season, he has wanted to win the Cy Young pitching, so his overall hitting production has come down to superstar levels from its video game like numbers. Would it surprise anyone if he threw a switch and decided to chase 60 home runs for his 2027 goal, assuming we have a full season?
Finally, we have Alonso, who is unlike anyone else on this list. Alonso bucked the "new face in a new place" concerns that came with his move from New York to Baltimore by putting the Baltimore offense on his back this summer and somehow keeping the last place team in the American League East in the hunt for the final wild card. He already has 30 homers and a chance to hit 40 for the first time since 2023 needing 10 more homers in the final 31 games of the season. Alonso has the most punitive of home parks of this group due to the dimensions in Camden Yards in left field. He has hit 20 of his 30 homers this season to the non-pull parts of the field, including 14 opposite field home runs. He also has the aging curve working against him as Alonso enters his age-32 season. This is when bat speed starts to slow down and Father Time comes for all hitters:
It was one thing to hope Alonso could avoid the pitfalls of free agents before him faltering in the first year of their new deals in new places. It would be another to ask a right-handed hitter in a park, which is at best, league average for right-handed hitters, and moving into the deceleration portion of the aging curve to once again defy the odds against him. His 2026 numbers are lining up well with his 2026 ZiPS projections thus far, but it's worth looking at his 2027 and 2028 projections as well, which show some of these factors coming into play. Finally, Alonso has never had a stint on the injured list, which is an incredible fact considering the prevalence of injuries in this sport.
If I had to guess which of these potential 40-plus homer hitters is the 2027 example of what we have seen from Santander, Raleigh, Judge and Soto, it's the Polar Bear, because he's battling risks on multiple fronts.
