Monday night against Houston, Jason Heyward smacked his twelfth home run of the season. Monday is also Heyward’s twenty-first birthday, and his birthday blast was the first HR by a player on his twenty-first birthday since Alex Rodriguez did so in 1996.
Thanks to Birthday Blast, The Jason Heyward Home Run Drought Is Over
Aside from the cool historical and personal aspect of the homer, it signaled an end to a fairly long power outage from Heyward. It was Heyward’s first home run since June 17th against the Rays, breaking a 134 plate appearance homer drought. During the drought, Heyward hit .250/.359/.348. (BA/OBP/SLG)
Heyward’s changing offensive game has been mentioned in this space before, which you are surely familiar with if you follow “least popular blog posts ever” meta-blogs. Despite the lack of power, Heyward has been a very productive hitter since returning from the DL on July 13. Since that time, Heyward has emerged as a kind of extremely young Ichiro, hitting .291/.402/.407. He’s been a perfect top of the order hitter for the Braves. You can see from his hit chart since the last home run that he hasn’t really driven the ball, but he’s gotten his share of singles and is walking a ton. An ability to post a .402 OBP for a long stretch of time at such a tender age is a tremendously good sign.
So, as we’re required to say, “happy birthday, Jason Heyward.”
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