Who will be next player to reach 500 home runs after Miguel Cabrera?

When Miguel Cabrera hits his 500th home run – it will happen any day now – feel free to celebrate the occasion.

You may not get another chance to do so for several years.

Cabrera hit his 499th home run Wednesday night against Matt Harvey and the Baltimore Orioles. He is now just one home run shy of joining a club that to date has just 27 members.

Membership in the 500 home run club has gotten a lot tougher to obtain in recent years. Since the end of the juiced ball era around a decade ago, only two players have their 500th home run. Albert Pujols did so in April of 2014 and David Ortiz produced his 500th in September of 2015.

Breaking down the chase to 500

Nobody has reached 500 in the ensuing nearly six seasons. That’s the longest stretch since the onset of the steroid era.

The last gap of more than a few years ended in 1996 when Eddie Murray hit his 500th home run for Baltimore. He was the first to do so since Mike Schmidt hit his own 500th against Pittsburgh in 1987.

That nine-year period was the longest gap since Ted Williams struck his 500th in 1960. That made Williams only the fourth player to hit a 500th home run, joining Babe Ruth (1929), Jimmie Foxx (1950), and Mel Ott (1945.)

When Cabrera hits his 500th, it could mark the beginning of another drought that could extend five seasons or more. Only a half dozen active players have as many as 300 home runs, and only a couple of them have a plausible chance to get to 500.

Other than Pujols and Cabrera, the only active player with more than 400 is Nelson Cruz. He sits at 440, having added 23 to his total this season alone. But Cruz is already 40 years old, a free agent at season’s end, and would need two more productive seasons to get to 500.

Will any team be willing to give Cruz the plate appearances he’ll need to reach the 500 plateau?

The next three players with plausible chances to get to 500 are Giancarlo Stanton, Joey Votto, and Mike Trout. Stanton has 329, Votto 318, and Trout 310.

Votto’s case is the shakiest. He’s 37, he needs 182 and he’s averaged fewer than 20 home runs the past five seasons. He’s not likely.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Stanton looked like a legitimate 500 home run prospect. He hit 59 in 2017 and 38 in his first season in New York in 2018.

But injuries have limited his ability to stay on the field and reduced his home run production to just 24 since the end of the 2018 season. His home run rate has fallen in recent seasons from one every dozen plate appearances to one every two dozen.

To project Stanton as hitting 171 home runs through the end of his current contract in 2030 – when he will be 38 – you have to also project him to stay healthy enough to average about 25 home runs per season.

Trout has the best chance. He is in his age-29 season and is 190 away from his own 500th. Two seasons ago that figure seemed certain to fall to the Angels star, who had 285 at the end of the 2019 season.

Trout still seems like the most plausible candidate to hit a 500th home run. But the shortened 2020 season combined with an injury-plagued 2021 have slowed Trout’s march. He’s only added 25 home runs since the end of 2019.

Assuming he is back on the field soon, Trout remains a likely 500 home run club member. To date he has averaged one home run every 18.8 plate appearances. If he maintains that pace into his 30s, and given that he has averaged more than 770 plate appearances per season, Trout could reach 500 as quickly as 2026.

The problem is it requires Trout to both remain healthy and productive.

Aside from Stanton and Trout, the only active player who probably projects as ‘likely’ to hit a 500th home run some day is Philadelphia outfielder Bryce Harper. He entered play Friday just past the halfway mark in that quest, with 252.

That leaves Harper 248 home runs short of his own 500th. At the rate he’s hitting them – about one every 20 plate appearances – he would need another 5,000 plate appearances to get there. Harper’s averaged about 550 plate appearances per season, putting the 28 year old at 500 about nine years from now.

Aside from young aggressive hotshots of the stripe of Vlad Guerrero Jr., the only other player with a plausible shot at 500 is Atlanta first baseman Freddie Freeman. He has 264. But Freeman is 31 and his one-in 25-plate appearances home run profile means he would need nearly 6,000 more plate appearances to reach 500 homers. Since Freeman is averaging about 600 plate appearances per season, that’s a solid decade of future play with no letup in home run production: possible but unlikely.