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How many home runs will J.D. Martinez hit?

With the second half on us, it's time to ask a pressing question: how many home runs will J.D. Martinez hit before the end of the season?

Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

You really don't need me to tell you that J.D. Martinez is on fire. He has 14 homers in his last 20 games, which prorates to a pace of 113 home runs over 162 games. He's quickly establishing himself as one of the premier sluggers of the game right now, sitting at second in the AL in big flies. The question, though, is how many will he end up with?

There are a few ways to look at this problem. Conveniently enough, we can pretty much double the number of home runs he has through 82 games and come out with a rough estimate of his pace. This would put Martinez at about 48 home runs, or the most for a Tiger since 1990 when a fellow named Cecil was charming the world alongside his young son.

Maybe you believe that Martinez is going to continue to crank everything he sees until the end of the year. If he continues to hit dingers at 0.7 per game (he won't), then Martinez would end up with a Barry Bonds-destroying 80 home runs. If he's half as awesome at hitting homers as he has been the last three weeks, that would mean 52. I think we'd be okay with that.

In reality, Martinez will slow down the torrent of dingers at some point. His home run to fly ball ratio, which sat around 10 percent the first three years he was in the majors, rose to 19.5 percent last year and is sitting around 24 percent this year. It's a testament to his growth as a hitter and his obvious strength, but it begs the question of sustainability. Does Martinez continue to crank at this rate? No. But I doubt we see "May Martinez" again, when he slumped pretty badly by his standards. So the solution lies somewhere in the middle ground.

Last year, in the second half, J.D. hit ten homers. That's a good lower bound to accept (believe me, I'm trying not to go all hubris or jinx him or anything, but good grief have you seen him swing the bat recently)- giving him 34 home runs on the season. The upper bound is about 80, as proven by science. The real future total?

Take a crack in the comment sections. Guess anywhere from 24 (don't guess that) to 80 (also don't guess that). Bonus if you use math/and or narratives to derive your answer, and double bonus if you use GIFs to solve it!