A-Rod: Future Home Run King in the making?

Barry Bonds is the new home run king. After more than three decades of Hank Aaron holding the “holy grail” of all baseball records, Bonds, amid steroid scandals and all, passed Hammerin’ Hank when he hit his 756th career home run a month ago. He is currently padding his career total and has said that next season will be his last in the Major Leagues. With his current pace, Bonds might just hit somewhere close to 800 home runs before he retires.

Slowly but surely, creating havoc among Major League pitchers with his home runs, Alex Rodriguez became the youngest player in league history to reach 500 career home runs at 32 years old. At this time of writing, A-Rod currently has 52 home runs (HR) for the season and 516 for his career. Outside of his first two years in the majors (where he only played a total of 65 games), he has been hitting around .300 and has averaged roughly 40-50 home runs per year. He is poised to eventually set a record or two with his hitting. Would the home run record be within his sights before he hangs it all up?

Given that A-Rod started quite early, playing in the majors at the age of 19, if he plays for the next 10 years, he would retire having played for 23 seasons. Though it can be taken that he would not be as productive now as he would be at around age 38 onwards, he should still be able to produce decent numbers to help him reach the home run record [which from an estimate would be close to 800 homers].

Let’s see if I can show a computation of what CAN happen with A-Rod’s home run total:

Let us assume that A-Rod does not hit a home run for the rest of the 2007 season: He’ll finish the season with 52 HR with 516 for his running total.


For the next 5 seasons (until Rodriguez becomes 37): He could hit around 40-50 HRs per year, so lets estimate 45 HR/year -> 225 HRs total

After 5 more seasons (age 38-43): He would be hitting slightly lower HR totals, around 30 per year -> 150 HRs total.

All in all, I am estimating that he could hit around 375 HRs for the next 10 years, and with his 516 HRs already hit:

516 + 375 = 891 HRs.

My equation might be flawed, and I do admit, this is just a rough sketch of what MAY happen as long as Alex Rodriguez remains healthy, and he keeps on hitting home runs at the pace that he’s in right now.

Even Barry Bonds himself said in an interview that he is just “babysitting” the record until A-Rod catches up. I feel the same way.