rewrite this title A Cal Raleigh Home Run Update

He did it! Cal Raleigh launched his 60th home run of the season last night, joining a rare club of elite sluggers. In hitting 60 so quickly, he’s left himself with a chance to match Aaron Judge’s American League record of 62, or perhaps even surpass it. With four games left in the season, how likely is it? I fired up my computer to ask. As a refresher, last week I modeled Raleigh’s home run hitting talent, the parks he’ll play in, and his scheduled opposition to work out which side of the plate he’ll hit from and how likely he is to hit a home run in any given plate appearance the rest of the way. Then I simulated the season a million times to work out the probability of each milestone.

Last week, 60 home runs looked likely but not certain. Now that it’s in the bag, naturally 62 home runs looks meaningfully more likely:

I didn’t bother with a table, but it’s worth noting that if you desperately want to see homer number 61 in person, you should go today. The Rockies pitching staff has already served up two home runs to the Big Dumper, and my model gives him about a 1-in-3 chance of hitting another off of them. On the other hand, if you want to see homer number 63, you’ll need to wait until the last minute:

A 15% chance is better than I expected, but then again, Raleigh got to 60 in the earlier part of the distribution I had previously forecast, so it makes sense that his odds of hitting bigger milestones have increased. Bigger numbers like 66 and 70? They’re still not really on the table, with less than a 1-in-400 chance of him hitting 66. But man, what a performance. Raleigh’s season continues to be one for the ages.