Trevor Story Is Doing That Home Run Thing Again, But That's About All He's Doing
With his ninth home run of the season, Trevor Story now holds the National League record for most home runs by a rookie in the month of April. He’s not on his pace of hitting one home run per game anymore, but the idea that pitchers were going to make adjustments in order to keep him in the ballpark has yet to happen. I mean, maybe they are trying to make these adjustments and it’s just not working. Look at where the pitch was that he hit for a home run on Wednesday night. He went down and got that thing, and that’s likely where the scouting report says to locate your pitches when you’re facing Story.
Maybe it’s time we stop wondering when the Trevor Story home run surge will stop, and start wondering when people will actually start giving him some credit for being a legit power threat. Now, if you want to criticize his actual overall hitting ability, you’d have a much, much better case. Even when he was crushing homers to start the year, that’s really all he was doing was crushing homers.
Through his first six games, Story hit seven home runs, but he was only hitting .333 (9-for-27). You figure a guy that has seven bombs in six games would be hitting something crazy like at least .450 or better, especially if they’re seeing the ball that well. Coming into play on Thursday, Story is hitting .241 with a .955 OPS. The only reason his OPS looks so good is because he’s slugging .651. He’s gotten on base at a .304 clip, and he leads the National League in strikeouts, as well as home runs. Of his 20 hits this season, nine have been home runs, three have been doubles and two have been triples, so 70% of his hits have gone for extra bases. The percentage of extra base hits that he has is incredible, but at the same time, he’s not putting the ball in play nearly enough as he should be with power like that.