Kyle Seager sets a new career high with 31 home runs

I decided to save this for its own separate article because it is that important. Sure, I could’ve talked about it in the series recap, but left that as an admiration/disgust article towards Salvador Perez. That guy is awesome. Just, I’m glad you’re gone and do it somewhere else, please. This is solely about Kyle Seager, and how he set a career-high with 31 home runs, and he’s done it with 31 games left in the season.

Since the All-Star game, there are only two people that have hit more home runs in that time than Kyle Seager. One is Perez (of course) and the other is Joey Votto (one of the most under-rated awesome guys in any sport, ever). They both have 17 through September 29th. Seager has 15. It’s an impressive number, especially when you realize that he is only hitting .222 since. Part of that is the shift, but he was only hitting .213 before the break, so he’s actually better since there, too.

That gets Seager to 238 career home runs, good for 4th all-time in Mariners history. That goes along with the 300+ doubles that he has now, which sits 3rd all-time. Seager is climbing the ranks of all-time Mariners, and this is another notch in his belt. There is one thing he is missing, and that’s one of the top home run seasons in Mariners history. Just how high could he go?

Kyle Seager has hit a career-high in home runs and could make a run to the top 15 of any single-season in Mariners history.

Top 15?! That’s crazy talk, right?

Well, maybe not. Here’s why I think he’s got a chance to push for 40 home runs.

Let’s look at his home run rates from both before the All-Star break and after the All-Star break. Before, he hit 16 in 89 games. That means he hit a homer in 18% of his games. After, he has hit 15 in just 40 games. That’s a 37.5% rate. There are a few numbers that I think you could reasonably extrapolate from here.

First, and more optimistic, would be to assume that he finishes out the remainder of the season hitting them at the same rate of 37.5% since the break. That means he would hit 11.6, rounding up to 12, more home runs on the season. That would put him to the insane number of 43 on the year.

Secondly, would be to combine the rates. You can do this two ways. Straight up combine them and average them (27.7%) or look at his season rate (23.66%). The first would give you just shy of nine homers, putting him at 40. The second would get him seven more, putting him to 38.

Then, you could be pessimistic and say he goes back to the before All-Star numbers, so he would only hit 5-6 more. Or even more so, that he would get tired and slow down to compensate, and only hit a couple.

There are a ton of different ways to think about how many he is going to hit. I wanna be a bit optimistic, especially since he really is focusing on pulling the ball and getting it in the air. I think Seager is going to get to that 40 mark. Nine more home runs in 31 games. It’s gonna be tough to do it, but he’s shown the propensity and ability to do that over the last 6 weeks.

40 home runs have only happened 14 times in the history of the Seattle Mariners, and only by four different people. Griffey (6), Buhner (3), A-Rod (3), and Cruz (2). If Seager finishes strong, he could become just the fifth Mariner in history to hit 40 home runs.

Congratulations to Kyle Seager on accomplishing yet another amazing statistic throughout your time with the Mariners. Here’s hoping that come to the end of the season, we are seeing that homerun number start with a 4.