San Diego Padres: Franmil Reyes And The Solo Home Run

The San Diego Padres hit a lot of solo home runs, especially Franmil Reyes.

Once again, the San Diego Padres are in dead last. With just over three weeks left in the regular season, the Friars have posted a team on-base percentage of .296, three points behind the Baltimore Orioles, who sit in 29th. They are the only two teams in Major League Baseball with team OBPs under .300.

Obviously, the odds that any home run hit by a member of the Padres is of the solo variety are extremely high. In fact, 65% of all home runs hit by the Padres this season have been solo home runs. However, that’s not the highest mark in the league.

Surprisingly, the Los Angeles Dodgers lead the league in this category, hitting a solo home run 68% of the time, despite posting a team on-base percentage of .326, the ninth-best mark in the league.

Franmil Reyes leads the way for the Padres.

Just to be clear, this isn’t a knock on Franmil Reyes. It isn’t his fault that the hitters in front of him can’t get on base. However, Reyes has 15 home runs (as of September 8th) in his rookie season, with 12 of them being of the solo variety. That gives him the team lead in this department, one ahead of Christian Villanueva and his 11 solo bombs.

Not that this is the sort of rookie record Reyes or fans are anxiously waiting for him to break, should The Franimal hit two more solo home runs, he will tie Jedd Gyorko‘s 2013 record mark of 14 solo home runs as a rookie. At the moment, Reyes has 150 fewer at-bats than Gyroko did in his full rookie year.

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Reyes, like much of the San Diego Padres outfield, hasn’t been able to secure regular playing time, even finding himself between San Diego and El Paso throughout much of the season. It really makes you wonder what kind of numbers he could put up over the course of an entire season. Especially considering that, outside of Hunter Renfroe, no other Padres hitter has shown the amount of progression that Reyes has.

Fans saw Reyes more in August than any other month this year, racking up 65 at-bats in 24 games. It was his best month of the season, slashing .308/.375/.677 with a 1.052 OPS. Half of his 20 hits went for extra bases, including seven home runs (nine RBI).

You have to believe that there are a number of General Managers still shaking their head at passing on Reyes in last year’s Rule 5 draft, looking at you Mike Chernoff (Cleveland Indians). Now the biggest question remains, can Reyes find a permanent spot in this lineup. The adjustments he has made (Dustin Palmateer of The Athletic, subscription required) shows drastic positive growth that can stick moving forward.

The strikeouts are always going to be there, he’s a power slugger, however, if his teammates can get on base in front of him, maybe this Padres team can finally score some runs.