​We know that home runs tend to rise during the summer. A 2025 piece by Garrett Heyd highlighted that warm air makes air molecules more spread out, lowering air density and allowing the ball to travel farther. The article goes into extensive scientific detail, but for our purposes, warmer and more humid conditions help the ball travel farther, which helps explain the summer surge in home runs. There’s more to the equation, though. As I noted in my MLB notebook last week, the baseball has changed since the season began due to a manufacturing issue, which has reduced drag on the ball and caused batted balls to fly roughly five feet farther than they did in the early months. With warmer weather and a ball that encounters less drag, we should expect a noticeable uptick in home runs over the next couple of months. But which hitters will be most affected?
In an effort to get a solid read on current batted-ball quality, I focused on players’ performances from May 20 onward. That yields around a 40-game sample for most hitters, with a minimum of 40 plate appearances required. I examined hitters who were barreling the ball above the league average, pulling the ball in the air at roughly league average rates, and posting a lower HR/FB rate than average. The idea is that these hitters will naturally run into some favorable home-run luck, and could see an even bigger jump with the humid weather and the ball’s reduced drag.
League average from May 20 to July 8 shows a 7.6% barrel rate, 18.7% pull-air rate, and a 12.6% HR/FB rate. Here are the players and their numbers (barrel%, HR, HR/FB, Pull Air%):
– Jackson Merrill: Barrel 0.100; HR 0.846; HR/FB 0.125; Pull Air 21%
– Max Muncy: Barrel 0.085; HR 0.125; HR/FB 0.29; Pull Air 29%
– Corbin Carroll: Barrel 0.085; HR 0.938; HR/FB 0.122; Pull Air 49/22.7
– Jorge Soler: Barrel 0.111; HR 1.130; HR/FB 0.123; Pull Air 31.7
– Tyler Stephenson: Barrel 0.085; HR 0.143; HR/FB 0.123; Pull Air 32.9
– Dylan Crews: Barrel 0.092; HR 0.437; HR/FB 0.121; Pull Air 5.1
– Royce Lewis: Barrel 0.126; HR 0.256; HR/FB 0.119; Pull Air 38
– Luke Raley: Barrel 0.099; HR 0.924; HR/FB 0.117; Pull Air 29.6
– Jesús Sánchez: Barrel 0.208; HR 0.275; HR/FB 0.111; Pull Air 22.6
– Dalton Rushing: Barrel 0.122; HR 0.163; HR/FB 0.103; Pull Air 28.4
– Matt McLain: Barrel 0.136; HR 0.333; HR/FB 0.103; Pull Air 20.3
– Cal Raleigh: Barrel 0.103; HR 0.264; HR/FB 0.133; Pull Air 3.3
– Mookie Betts: Barrel 0.081; HR 0.633; HR/FB 0.370; Pull Air 21.1
– Bobby Witt Jr.: Barrel 0.125; HR 0.50; HR/FB 0.094; Pull Air 18.3
– Logan O’Hoppe: Barrel 0.130; HR 0.987; HR/FB 0.085; Pull Air 19.5
– Trevor Larnach: Barrel 0.077; HR 0.674; HR/FB 0.085; Pull Air 26.2
– Salvador Perez: Barrel 0.107; HR 0.438; HR/FB 0.083; Pull Air 25.6
A handful of these players may see a modest bump in home-run production in the season’s second half, but they have already posted a solid amount since May 20 and carry league-average or near-league-average HR/FB rates. Players like Jackson Merrill, Bobby Witt Jr., Max Muncy, Corbin Carroll, and Dylan Crews are unlikely to drastically lift their past pace, though it’s worth noting that Merrill and Crews each have six home runs in 42 games since May 20. That translates to roughly a 22-HR pace over a full 162-game season (assuming they maintain equivalent playing time). Those figures aren’t earth-shattering, but they beat what many observers expect from those players. In fact, Crews has a hard-hit rate of 47.1% over that stretch, ranking 36th among 163 qualified hitters, which adds another layer to the discussion of their potential upside as the weather warms and the ball’s drag decreases.