A Vinnie Pasquantino Prediction
What's Pasquatch going to do in 2026?
I keep track of a little thing called the 20/20/100 club. I wrote about it here, but in case you don’t want to give me additional link clicks or page views, the 20/20/100 club is made up of players who put up 20+ home runs, 20+ doubles, and fewer than 100 strikeouts in a season.
It’s not an easy thing to do. Just 11 players, including Cody Bellinger, Jose Ramirez (who does it every single year), Kyle Tucker, and Mookie Betts, achieved the feat in 2025.
I’m predicting that Vinnie Pasquantino will add his name to the list this season.
Pasquantino missed the 20/20/100 club by a centimeter in each of the last two years. In 2024, he came up one homer short. In 2025, he had seven too many strikeouts. He’s destined for membership in 2026.
Pasqauntino’s power climbed last season, but his strikeouts rose with it. His strikeout rate jumped three points from 2025, but it still sat at just 15 percent. He struck out only 107 times in 160 games and was one of three players with 30+ home runs and fewer than 110 strikeouts.
Pasquantino doesn’t need to overhaul his approach to join the 20/20/100 club by any means. The new ABS system might simply give him back a few strikeouts — and that could be enough.
Right now, Pasqauntino is on the front porch banging on the door and waiting for the current members to let him in. They’ll have no choice but to grant him entry in 2026.
Great call on Pasquantino — he's been knocking on that door so loudly it's almost cruel that he hasn't gotten in yet. One homer short in 2024, seven strikeouts over the line in 2025. The baseball gods are clearly toying with him.
The ABS angle is interesting and probably underrated as a factor. Pasquantino's a low-swing-and-miss guy who works deep counts, which means he's exactly the kind of hitter who accumulates borderline called strikes over a full season. If ABS tightens the zone on some of those edge pitches, seven strikeouts disappear almost automatically.
What makes me fully buy this prediction is that he doesn't need to change anything. He's not a project. He's not a guy who needs to fix a swing flaw or rediscover his approach. He just needs a marginally cleaner version of what he already does — and at 27 years old in what should be a prime season, that's not much to ask.
My only mild pushback: the 30 HR projection. He hit 30 last year, which was a career high, and projecting him to clear 20 while also clearing 100 strikeouts downward is asking two things to move in opposite directions simultaneously. Usually, power and strikeouts travel together. But as you note, his 15% strikeout rate is already elite for a power hitter, so maybe he's just built differently.
Count me in on Pasquantino for the 2026 club.