Royals: Candidates to hit 20 home runs in the 2020 season

In 2019, the Kansas City Royals saw two players grow into stars with some power hitting abilities in their arsenal.

Jorge Soler

Jorge Soler is the most obvious candidate for the Kansas City Royals that will hit 20 home runs in 2020. If Soler can continue his production from the 2019 season, he could easily hit 40 or 50 home runs, again breaking the Royals single-season record of 48.

Soler saw some struggles at the plate towards the beginning of 2019. He had a high strikeout rate and struggled to keep his batting average above .200 for the months of April and June. Soler started to figure things out, though, and he took off from there.

Soler managed to float around a month-to-month .300 batting average range during the last three months of the season, and of course, never really saw his slugging percentage decrease. He was able to cut down drastically on his strikeouts and his on-base percentage saw a substantial increase as well.

Soler must continue to produce with this success in 2020 if he wants to hit the 40-50 home run mark again, but there should be no doubt that a player with his power will hit 20 home runs in 2020.

Hunter Dozier

Hunter Dozier is a player that really impressed for the Kansas City Royals in 2019. He appeared in 102 games in 2018, but struggled at the plate, slashing .229/.278/.395. In 2019, Dozier knew he had to prove that he was supposed to be on the field for the Royals every night.

Dozier appeared in 139 games in 2019 and slashed .279/.348/.522, a great increase from his numbers in 2018. Along with the increase at the plate, Dozier knocked 10 triples and 26 home runs. It’s obvious that he has power, and the Royals can only hope he continues to grow.

Dozier’s power-hitting that showed in 2019 makes him an obvious candidate for 20 home runs in 2020. It’s likely that he may hit even more, given that he missed some games due to injury and seemed to slump for a while after coming back to play.

Between Dozier and Soler, the Royals could see a large number of home runs next year if they can both continue to produce as they did in 2019. While this type of power hitting is not always the norm for the Royals, after a few disappointing seasons, it might be time they try something a bit different.