The headline number for Eugenio Suarez in 2019 is, without question, his 49 home runs, narrowly missing becoming the 2nd player in franchise history to hang half a hundred on the board. Not only was the home run total impressive in isolation, but it also represented a significant increase (+15) over Suarez’s previous career high.
And yet.
Baseball statistics are always in need of two elements of understanding: context and trade-offs.
First, the context. Comparing Suarez’s 2018 and 2019 seasons, we see that he exactly matched his doubles and triples total year over year (22 and 2, respectively), we see that he exactly matched his walk rate year over year (10.