Infielder slash designated hitter Eugenio Suárez hit 49 home runs in 2025 with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Seattle Mariners. He also hit 49 home runs for the Cincinnati Reds in 2019, a year when seemingly everyone was hitting home runs at a record pace.
He did it when everyone else was doing it, and he did it when no one in the Reds was doing it. He’s a home run machine with 325 already on his books, and a quick look at some of the underlying metrics behind his swing suggests he won’t be slowing down anytime soon in 2026 at age 34.
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For example…
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His 113.8 max exit velocity in 2025 is actually his career high according to Statcast
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His Barrel/PA last season was 8.7, his highest since 2021 (8.9) and the second-highest of any season in his career
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Last season’s launch angle of 21.9 degrees was the highest of his career, continuing an upward trend that jumped from 14.8 degrees in 2018 to 17.7 degrees in 2019 – in other words, he implemented a plan to continuously hit the moon, and it’s working!
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The 47.6% rate he posted in 2025 was easily the best of his career, and he totaled 57 barrels.
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A 26.5% fast swing rate (meaning he swings the bat faster than 75 mph) is the best single-season mark of his career since tracking began in 2023, a full 5% improvement from 21.5% in 2024
He’s a fundamentally different hitter than he was during the Reds’ stellar season in 2019, but the game itself is fundamentally different now, too. What’s not fundamentally different now, though: a) The Great American Ballpark is still a launching pad for home runs, and b) Geno Suarez can still knock the dirt out of the ball, and mostly into the air. In fact, his 50.4 percent fly ball rate (per FanGraphs) ranked fourth among 145 qualified batters in last season’s game, while Seattle teammate Carl Rowley (among 60 of his own) led the way with more than 57 percent.
Considering he’s on a one-year “prove it” contract, there’s every reason to believe Suarez will hit 40, 50, or even 123 home runs in a Reds uniform in 2026.
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