Worry? No way. Junior's home runs come in bunches

This story was excerpted from Adam Berry’s Rays Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

ST. PETERSBURG -- Junior Caminero wasn’t worried.

When the Rays returned to Tropicana Field last Friday night, it was Caminero’s 15th straight game without a home run. That matched the longest drought of his career. Seeing Caminero go a couple days without a home run can feel like an odd sight. For pitchers to keep him in the ballpark for multiple weeks might have been cause for concern.

Not for Caminero, though.

“Not every at-bat is a homer, but the homers [are] coming,” he said Friday. “Everybody knows I have power.”

Of course, he was right. On Saturday, he showed his pure strength by ripping a game-tying home run on an off-balance swing in the sixth inning of the Rays’ 7-6 win over the Padres. On Sunday, he got the Rays on the board with a Statcast-projected 440-foot moonshot to left-center field before Tampa Bay’s wild comeback in a 5-4 win against San Diego.

Now, Caminero is sitting on 37 homers, tied with Yordan Alvarez atop the American League leaderboard. Only Kyle Schwarber (40) and Pete Crow-Armstrong (38) have more. It’s the latest date in franchise history that a Rays player has held at least a share of the AL home run lead.

And if history is any precedent, Caminero might just be getting started.

"It's coming, my guys. The home runs are coming,” Caminero said after Sunday’s game. “Take it easy. It's gonna be there.”

As manager Kevin Cash noted Friday, the 23-year-old All-Star’s home runs tend to come in bunches. The most incredible example of that came earlier this summer, when he went deep in six straight games and 11 times in an 11-game stretch from June 23-July 4.

Caminero has homered in consecutive games (or more) nine times this season and 19 times in his young career, an indication of how streaky his home run swing can be. He always hits the ball hard, obviously. Even his singles are scorched. But the ball starts flying when he combines that with enough elevation.

“It’s just a matter of time,” Cash said. “When he gets the ball up in the air, he definitely has power to carry it out anywhere in the ballpark.”

In the likely event that Caminero hits at least three home runs this month, he will become the first player in franchise history with multiple 40-homer seasons. He has a chance to match the 45 he launched last year, and could make another run at Carlos Peña’s franchise-record mark of 46 from 2007.

But this run at the plate by Caminero is impressive regardless of his home run total. His first-inning single on Monday night extended his hitting streak to 14 games, the Majors’ longest active streak and the longest by a Ray since Chandler Simpson’s 18-game streak last season. The streak began during Caminero’s homerless stretch.

It’s yet another sign of Caminero’s continued evolution into an all-around hitter.

Despite finishing third in the AL in home runs last season, he ranked 10th among qualified hitters in OPS (.846) due to his relatively pedestrian .311 on-base percentage. This year, his .905 OPS trails only Alvarez (1.037) among qualified AL hitters.

He’s improved his batting average. He’s already walked 70 times, compared to 41 last year. He’s boosted his adjusted OPS+ by 20 points, from 130 to 150 as of Monday afternoon.

“A guy that, if he’s not hitting home runs, can still really contribute offensively to us with having good at-bats, whether it’s walks or doubles or singles,” Cash said. “I think he’s having just an excellent season.”

So, why worry? There’s no reason he should.

“I'm sleeping good. I'm sleeping good today because now I know we are comfortable. We are comfortable,” he said over the weekend. “Myself and everybody know the homers [are] coming. But we have one month plus, so I don't know [if it will be] 40, 45. It's coming, my guy. It's coming. Trust me.”