Trevor Story was drafted 45th overall out of Irving High School in Texas in 2011. Baseball America ranked him just the eighth best prospect on his team, the Colorado Rockies, last fall.
So it is safe to say that no one thought Story would have the greatest power-hitting start to a season in baseball history.
Batting second and starting at shortstop, Story hit two homers on Opening Day. He hit one the next night, and one the day after that, too. In Game Four, he belted two more.
That gave Story homers in the first four games of the season; he became the fifth player to do that, joining Willie Mays, Mark McGwire, Nelson Cruz and Chris Davis. All of those players were veterans when they accomplished the feat. Story is 23, and his major league experience before this season was zero.
After a homerless game on Saturday, he clouted another on Sunday. Story now has seven home runs in the first six games of the season, surpassing the record of six set by three serious sluggers, Mays in 1964, Mike Schmidt in 1976 and Larry Walker in 1997.
Story was pegged by few as a record-breaker. In 2,350 plate appearances at all levels of the minors he had hit 70 homers, which might project to 15 to 20 homers a season in the majors. He seemed to be a player with routine power at best.
He is also not an extraordinarily imposing physical specimen at 6 feet 1 inch and 180 pounds. “He uses his lower half well,” Colorado manager Walt Weiss told The Associated Press. “That’s usually where it comes from. The guys that hit from the ground up tend to have more power, and that’s what he does very well.”
This year’s spring training seemed promising. Story hit a team-high six homers in 53 at-bats, helping him earn the opening day start. The Rockies had traded their longtime starting shortstop, Troy Tulowitzki, to the Blue Jays in July, and the shortstop they acquired in the deal, Jose Reyes, has been on paid administrative leave, after accusations of domestic violence in Hawaii. Charges have been dropped in the case, but Reyes remains in baseball limbo for now.
The Rockies’ eagerness for Reyes’ return may well be tempered by Story’s fast start. Through Sunday, he led the National League in slugging percentage, RBI, total bases, extra base hits and, of course, homers.
His power surge is not a Coors Field fluke. Three of Story’s homers came at Coors, which last year was the fifth most favorable park for home runs. But the other four came at Chase Field in Arizona, a below average park for homers.
The most recent home run hot streak to draw attention came from the New York Met Daniel Murphy, who after a career with no more than 14 home runs in a season, hit homers in six straight games in last year’s postseason.
Then it ended. He was 3-for-20 in the World Series without an extra-base hit.
Is Story headed for a similar crash? He is unlikely to hit the 189 home runs he is on a pace for this season. But the three men he surpassed for the six-game record all had pretty great years, ranging from 38 to 49 home runs.
Looking further ahead — it’s April, why not dream? — Mays, Schmidt and Walker had career homer totals of 660, 548 and 383.
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