The 2023 Atlanta Braves tied the 2019 Minnesota Twins for most homeruns in a single MLB season, launching 307 longballs.
And they're projected to be even better in 2024.
MLB.com, naming players who could potentially lead all of MLB in homers in the upcoming season, singled out both Ronald Acuña Jr and Matt Olson as power threats that could reach new heights in their homer totals this upcoming season.
Ronald came in 3rd on the list, behind both New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge and Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani, with Olson right behind him in 4th.
How could their power production change in 2024?
Ronald should have had more home runs last year
For Acuña, MLB.com's case boiled down to the fact that in his two healthiest seasons, 2019 & 2023, he hit 41 homers in each season...but it was actually an underperformance.
Last year, Ronald hit thirteen more barrels - a "batted ball event "at the optimal combination of exit velocity and launch angle to get a home run - than anyone else in baseball, but finished with "only" 41 homers, a conversion rate of 47.7%.
Ronald's 86 barrels led all of baseball, with a max exit velocity in those coming out to a league-leading 121.2 mph, but he underperformed the expected home run production off of those balls. Per research from fantasy baseball site PitcherList, a typical barrel to home-run conversion rate is just shy of 60%, and so standard power production for Ronald off of 86 barrels would have been 51 or 52 homers instead of his 41.
And honestly, I'm not sure why there's an underperformance here other than "small sample size shenanigans" - Truist Park plays as a hitter's park for home run production, coming in 9th for homer park factors at 109, 9% more homer prone than the "average" ballpark.
Matt Olson is thanks to continued improvement and a lineup change
Olson's amazing 2023 production of a league-leading 54 homers (which was a team single-season record) owes to improved metrics behind his shots - career bests in barrel rate of 16.4% and hard hit rate of 55.5%.
So projecting Olson to lead all of baseball in home runs in 2024 assumes that he continues that improvement and thrives from the cleanup spot in the lineup, which saw him perform dramatically better than when he was in 2nd behind Ronald:
Matt Olson's performance in the 2-hole vs cleanup
Baseball Reference
| Lineup position | Games | Average | Slug | Homers | HR% (AB/HR) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Batting 2nd |
68 |
.228 |
.483 |
18 |
6.9% |
Batting 4th |
85 |
.328 |
.691 |
32 |
10.2% |
If Olson kept up his 10.2% HR rate with a full season of batting cleanup, that projects out to 62 homers.
And in fact, MLB.com speculates that Olson's ceiling isn't "lead the league in homers", it's "be the first NL player to hit more than 60 homers in a season since Barry Bonds hit 73 in 2001".
Lofty praise for the Braves first baseman.
If you had to pick a Braves slugger to lead the league in homers, is it Acuña, Olson, or someone else not on this list? Let us know!
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