Astros Slugger's Intriguing Path To 500 Career Home Runs
The Houston Astros are credited with one player in baseball history who hit 500 career home runs.
Eddie Mathews, a Texas native who played most of his MLB career with the Braves organization (Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta) ended up with the Houston Astros in 1967 after a trade.
On July 14, 1967, he became just the seventh player to hit 500 career home runs. The future Hall-of-Famer achieved the milestone against another future Hall-of-Famer, Juan Marichal.
He finished his career with 512 home runs but didn’t wrap up his career in Houston. He finished it in Detroit.
Jeff Bagwell wasn’t able to get there and he leads the Astros with 449 career home runs.
Could someone pass Bagwell one day? Possibly. Could a full-time Astros player reach 500 home runs one day? Possibly. Could that player already be on the Astros? Possibly.
Maybe its Yordan Alvarez.
Recently MLB.com proposed 13 players that could reach 500 home runs in their career and Alvarez made the list. He’s young, but MLB.com believes he has a chance.
Injuries have hampered the Cuban native, as he played in just 89 games in 2019-20. But in five MLB seasons he’s already hit 129 home runs.
That’s a long way from Bagwell, Mathews and 500 home runs. So how does he get there?
Take his current home run total and put it on a 162-game average and you get 43 home runs. That’s a robust average entering his age 27 season. If Alvarez were to do it, he could reach 500 in less than nine seasons.
Maintaining that average will be difficult. But it’s not impossible. Part of the reason Alvarez has a chance is because he appears to be making the move to a full-time designated hitter role, which would preserve his health long-term.
In each of the last three seasons he’s started more games at DH than he has in left field. Even with Michael Brantley’s retirement, the Astros have enough in the outfield to allow Alvarez to be a full-time DH.
Also going for him is his career slugging percentage of .588 and that, in spite of minor injuries, he’s averaged 551 plate appearances the last three seasons. So he gets to the plate and when he does, he connects.
Finally, MLB.com compares him to David Ortiz, who spent most of his career at DH and reached 500 home runs and was considerably behind Alvarez’s pace at this point in his career.
Perhaps Alvarez can become the Astros’ first 500 career home run hitter.
