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Houston Astros: Can Carlos Correa catch A-Rod in homers by a 20-year-old?
By Eric Huysman
Carlos Correa is having an epic rookie season for the Houston Astros in 2015; some already consider him one of the best shortstops in the game already. Anything thing can happen, but it seems that Correa will be the first Astros Rookie of the Year award winner since Jeff Bagwell won that award in 1991. It’s hard to believe that with all the good players that were developed by the Astros, only one person has won that award. Hunter Pence came close in 2007 but lost out to Ryan Braun that year.
Alex Rodriguez has been one of the players that Correa has been compared to early in his career because of the debut age and similar body type as well as skills. While Correa may eventually be the better player, Rodriguez will always have the cloud of suspicion over his PED use. One thing that people can not take away from him is the 26 homers he hit before his 21st birthday.
Correa’s 21st birthday will be September 22, 2015. Correa now has 16 homers on the season, which leaves him ten homers shy of possibly tieing Rodriguez before his 21st birthday. Correa has 17 games, which may not be enough games to hit ten homers unless he goes on a hot streak ala Chris Carter in 2014.
Let’s take a look at the math involved in the probability of him hitting ten home runs before September 22. He has hit 16 homers in 71 games this season. Setting up a proportion on how many home runs he has hit in 71 games to how many he would hit in 17 games, the math says he will have about four home runs. That will leave the Astros phenom at 20 homers as a 20-year-old, which is impressive, but he will fall short of Rodriguez’s 26 he hit.
He’s hit a home run in 22.5% of his major league games, so at that rate, there is no chance that he will do it. It hurt his chances when he sat out the recent stretch of games nursing a tight hamstring. One thing that math can’t take into consideration is that Correa can go on hot streaks where the ball is flying out of the ballpark.
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Another issue is that Correa has had some struggles at the plate recently. He is only hitting .259/ 2 hrs/ 8 RBI/ 2 sb over his past 15 games. While compared to some of the stats of other Astros players, these stats are pretty good. His home run pace has slowed down recently.
The next question is, could Correa reach 26 home runs in 2015? Setting up a proportion with 28 games left, the math says that Correa would probably hit only six more homers this season. That would put the young shortstop at 22 home runs, which would be one of the better seasons in the history of an Astros shortstop.
Other projections for the rest of the year for Carlos Correa.
Runs – 53 (currently 38)
Doubles – 24 (currently 17)
RBI – 63 (currently 45)
Stolen Bases – 16 (currently 11)
This kid is great, and Astros fans should be rooting for him for many years to come. He could soon find himself in the talk of being one of the top-10 players in the game.