168
Gary Sanchez was on a 61 home run pace in 2016 but, please, don’t be ludicrous.
Despite becoming the fastest player in baseball history (45 games) to reach the 18 home run mark and totaling 20 in his first 53 games, he hit just 10 in 71 Triple-A games prior to earning a call-up to the Bronx.
A digression is approaching, but that doesn’t mean the baseball world isn’t seeing its next superstar.
Along with his historic power surge, Sanchez maintained an OPS+ of 168 which was good enough for 6th best among Yankees’ hitters with at least 200 at-bats in a season since 1975.
Only Reggie Jackson (1980), Jason Giambi (2002), Alex Rodriguez (2005, ’07) and Paul O’Neill (1994) rank ahead of the Kraken.
It’s completely unfair to think that he’ll be in the range of breaking Barry Bonds’ single-season home run record, but to see such a young kid with a professional approach with the potential to carry a team is ensuring that you have a superstar, to say the least.
Even if New York only gets 25-30 homers and a .280 batting average, they’ll take it. What they won’t, however, is Kevin Maas 2.0 and Sanchez’s incredible OPS+, which is 68 points above league average, is an indication that the Yankees have something special.
