Rookie phenom Trevor Story on pace to make wrong kind of history

Trevor Story’s amazing April continued Wednesday night when he hit his ninth homer of the month during the Colorado Rockies’ game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. His fourth inning bomb broke the National League rookie record set by Albert Pujols in 2001.

Story’s tremendous April came out of nowhere. He was in the mix to replace Jose Reyes while Reyes is on paid administrative leave, and he won the job after wowing the Rockies in spring training. He homered twice in his major league debut (off of Zack Greinke, no less), becoming just the sixth player in MLB history to do so. Story would go on to homer six times in his first four games, which was the first time ever a rookie had homered in his first four games. Since that blistering start, everyone has been watching Story closely.

Breaking Pujols’ record wasn’t the only history that Story made on Wednesday night. He struck out three times, which gives him 34 total through his first 20 games. That’s the most strikeouts for any rookie ever to start a season. And there are still three more games in April! For context, Albert Pujols struck out 18 times in his first month while hitting one fewer home run.

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With 34 strikeouts in 20 games, Story is on pace to strike out 138 times in 81 games. That would absolutely obliterate the current first half strikeout record for rookies, which is currently held by Houston Astros right fielder George Springer. Springer did it in 2014 with 112, and if Story continues at this rate, he’ll beat Springer’s record by 26 strikeouts.

But there is cause for hope. Behind Story on the first month rookie strikeout list are Austin Jackson (32) and Alex Gordon (29). If they had continued with their strikeout happy ways after their first month, Jackson would have had 113 strikeouts through 81 games, and Gordon would have had 98. But that’s not where they ended up. 81 games through Jackson’s rookie year, he’d racked up 91, not 112. And Gordon had 73 instead of the 98 he was on pace for. After their first month, they continued to play and they made adjustments as they spent more time seeing major league pitching.

Even though Story is currently striking out at an historic rate for a rookie, that doesn’t mean he won’t change. It takes time for every player to get used to the majors, and we’ll undoubtedly see that with Story. If he learns to be more selective with his swings and take a few more pitches, he might be able to avoid setting more bad baseball records.

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