Judge Favored To Be 2020 Home Run Champion

New York Mets’ rookie Pete Alonso surprised a lot of people when he ended up leading Major League Baseball in home runs (53) last season. With the 2020 baseball season is just over one month away, a different player on a different New York team is now favored to be the home run champion this time around. Is Aaron Judge a good bet with this prop? Let’s take a closer look:

AARON JUDGE, NEW YORK YANKEES
ODDS: +900

The injury-interrupted 2019 season for Judge didn’t give him the best possible chance of showing what he could do. He had just 27 home runs in 102 games last season. Now, with a clean bill of health in 2020, maybe things can be different. The big reason to value Judge’s prospects in this particular competition is that he has the very short porch down the left and right field lines at Yankee Stadium. He has a ballpark in which he can swat a lot of homers if he can use his batspeed to great effect.

He’s now hit 27 home runs in back-to-back shortened seasons but he did hit 52 in his 2017 campaign when he played 155 games. That’s what bettors will be looking for if he stays healthy.

PETE ALONSO, NEW YORK METS
ODDS: +1000

The difficulty of picking the preseason home run champion is embodied in a player such as Alonso, who came out of nowhere to take everyone by surprise last season. Alonso won the home run title with 53 dingers. He was the only player to hit 50 or more homers, the runner-up being Eugenio Suarez of the Cincinnati Reds. Now that Alonso has mashed his way into history as a home-run champion, is he going to stick around and remain an elite power hitter, or was that 2019 season a magic carpet ride which is simply not going to be repeated? That is not an easy question to answer, which is part of the challenge of predicting home run leaders before a Major League Baseball season begins.

MIKE TROUT, LOS ANGELES ANGELS
ODDS: +1100

The steadiness and consistency of Mike Trout make him a difficult bet to turn down. Why wouldn’t you want to bet on Trout? He is the guy who is always going to be in the mix and while he might not always win, he is a player who comes closer to leading in a broad range of statistical categories than anyone else. Not only is he the best position player in baseball, he sets a standard of relentless excellence no one else can fully match.

Trout hit 45 homers last season and he’ll probably will do something very similar this upcoming season. Don’t forget that the Angels signed Anthony Rendon, who will be offering him some lineup protection. If you assume that Alonso, Suarez, and also third-place 2019 finishing Jorge Soler of the Kansas City Royals all regress from last season’s totals, Trout and Cody Bellinger of the Los Angeles Dodgers could be at the top of the pack instead of fourth and fifth place.

RONALD ACUNA, ATLANTA BRAVES
ODDS: +1200

The young, wiry slugger for the Atlanta Braves hit 41 homers last season. Now a year older and wiser – and having suffered a very tough loss in the playoffs to the St. Louis Cardinals – Acuna is likely to come back bigger and better than ever in 2020. He will be motivated not just to hit more homers, but to lift the Braves to the National League pennant and the World Series after so many postseason heartbreaks for the franchise this century.

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