Delmon Young, 22, has two home runs so far in his first season with the Twins even though he has almost 300 at-bats and the season is more than half over. That’s the fewest home runs of any Twins regular since the start of the season, including shortstop Brendan Harris who has four. However, Twins’ legend Tony Oliva told Sports Headliners he believes that in time Young will increase his home run frequency.
Expectations of many fans are more than even the 13 home runs Young hit in his first full season in the majors last season, playing for Tampa Bay. The expectations are based on Young’s reputation in recent years as one of baseball’s best young prospects, plus his physical size, 6-3, 200 pounds, and power is expected from those who play the outfield and hit in the middle of the batting order. Young was impressive last year leading all American League rookies in games (162), hits (186) and RBI (93).
Oliva, who is a part-time coach with the Twins and is frequently around the players, said eventually Young “will pull the ball” and hit more home runs. How many will he hit? “Who knows?” answered Oliva, who had a career .304 batting average, and although he hit the ball to all fields, he had 220 career home runs.
Young, a right-handed hitter, doesn’t try to pull the ball and hit home runs now, preferring to even hit the ball to the right of second base. That style has produced a respectable average, .278, but not power. He had a hot June including a second home run on Sunday and ended the month on a six game hitting streak.
The hope has to be that with maturity Young will develop a balance between power and average. In the minor leagues he twice hit 20 home runs or more.
The Twins consistently lack for home run hitting. They have 57 home runs, fewest in the American League. Last season they hit 118, second lowest to Kansas City’s 102.
Justin Morneau and Jason Kubel lead the Twins in home runs with 12 each. The last two seasons Morneau has hit 34 and 31 home runs. Oliva said Morneau is capable of hitting “30 to 40 home runs.”