Eugenio Suarez etched his name in the history books on Saturday night, becoming just the 19th player in MLB history (and first since 2017) to clobber four home runs in one game.
Despite his heroic efforts, which included a game-tying blast in the bottom of the ninth inning to extend the game, the Diamondbacks still lost in 10 innings. Suarez never got a chance for a record-breaking fifth home run, but the performance has put a spotlight on his remarkably unusual season.
Breaking down Eugenio Suarez’s strange start to 2025
It is certainly not a shock that this power surge came off the bat of Suarez. He has historically been an all-or-nothing “Three True Outcomes” (TTO) hitter who will accept a free pass or third strike if he can’t hit it out of the park. This season is no exception: in 28 games played so far in 2025, Suarez has 20 hits and exactly half of them have landed in the bleachers.
Although that small-sample extreme will undoubtedly back down into more reasonable territory, it is worth noting the uncommon shape that Suarez’s results are taking so far. The following graphic uses a project of mine called LASR (League-Adjusted Standardized Rating) which places all stats onto the same 20-80 scale based on league qualifiers. A 50 grade is average and every 10 points in either direction is one standard deviation (all data is sourced from FanGraphs).
Obviously, the 80 home run rate (HR%) LASR grade jumps out first. Prior to 2025, this had been achieved only 207 times in 154 seasons, coming out to about 1.34 players per season. Admittedly, Suarez is unlikely to maintain that level all year, but to be there now is impressive in its own right; he is the only qualified hitter currently at that mark.
What makes this output uniquely special, though, is the poor batting average (AVG) counteracting the power. Though plenty of players have prioritized long balls over singles (to their benefit), Suarez’s extremes are nearly unheard of. Below are all seasons in MLB history with an 80 or higher HR% LASR and a 40 or lower AVG LASR, along with their actual HR% and AVG values.
Player | Season | HR% LASR | AVG LASR | HR% | AVG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mike Grady | 1897 | 80 | 40 | 2.1 | .274 |
Herman Long | 1900 | 80 | 40 | 2.2 | .261 |
Fred Odwell | 1905 | 80 | 40 | 1.7 | .241 |
Vic Saier | 1914 | 85 | 40 | 2.7 | .240 |
Gavvy Cravath | 1918 | 80 | 40 | 1.6 | .232 |
Dave Kingman | 1975 | 80 | 35 | 6.6 | .231 |
Dave Kingman | 1976 | 85 | 40 | 7.3 | .238 |
Rob Deer | 1992 | 80 | 40 | 7.1 | .247 |
Eugenio Suarez | 2025 | 80 | 40 | 8.9 | .206 |
The first five entrants to this exclusive club were all in the dead-ball era, when hitting a home run was more of a happy accident than a measure of talent. The other two, Dave Kingman and Rob Deer, are the prototypical TTO hitters who stood out like sore thumbs in their day. Then there’s Suarez, who is somehow on this list despite the league as a whole prioritizing home runs over batting average much more than in those previous eras.
Even with an inevitable regression in both HR% and AVG on the way, merely starting out the year with this stretch is notable. Among players with at least 10 home runs in their first 27 games, Suarez’s batting average is second-lowest all-time. Only ex-teammate Jay Bruce, who hit 10 homers with a .182 batting average in his first 27 games in 2019, has him beat.
(Note: due to processing times, to confirm Suarez’s spot on that list, I had to run multiple StatHead queries for several different spans of years. Here is the query for seasons 2015 through 2025; to check other spans, simply change the timeframe – but beware of the loading time.)
Again, Suarez is not likely to remain in the Kingman-Deer stratosphere by season’s end, but that may be more the result of positive contact regression than negative power regression. His BABIP is currently .179, miles away from his .300 career average. His strikeout and walk rates are right in line with his established levels, and though his chase and whiff rates are slightly higher than normal, the differences are slight.
Meanwhile, his home run per fly ball rate (HR/FB%) is at a lofty 29.4%. That’s higher than his 18.4% career rate and is likely to come down, but he has maintained that rate over a full season before, posting a 29.5% HR/FB% when he smacked 49 home runs with the Reds in 2019. That was a “juiced ball” season in a hitter’s park, so those results are not easily replicable, but he has at least shown he’s capable of it.
This season’s home runs are also backed up by promising underlying metrics, with average exit velocity (EV), launch angle (LA), Barrel%, and HardHit% all at career highs. His expected stats are either right in line or even above his results, highlighted by an expected batting average (xAVG) that’s 20 points higher than his true batting average.
Since arriving in Arizona last season, he seems to be making more of an effort to pull the ball in the air, reaching a career-high 28.6% pulled-in-the-air rate in 2024. He has followed that up with a 28.8% rate this year and is second in MLB with a 24.5 degree average launch angle. His fly ball percentage (FB%) has reached a career-high 51.5% this year and none of those fly balls have been infield pop-ups.
Suarez will be a free agent after this season. He’ll be 34 so he won’t be looking at a long-term deal, but several teams should be looking for a dangerous weapon to add to their offensive arsenal. This early-season home run rate will likely simmer down, but it won’t fizzle out. And with a bit more batted-ball luck, Suarez looks to be setting himself up for a respectable payday.
For now, though, he’s a key piece to a Diamondbacks offense that has been as powerful as expected heading into 2025, leading the league with a .200 isolated power (ISO) and ranking near the top in most other offensive categories. Stuck in a (mostly) competitive division, Arizona will be relying on that offense to keep them afloat as the summer proceeds, and a bat like Eugenio Suarez could make all the difference.