The Detroit Tigers are off to a very decent start to the 2025 season, especially when compared to the rest of the anemic AL Central. While the Tigers have a number of players, including Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson, that have been key to that start, one name that is also getting a lot of attention is Kerry Carpenter.

While Carpenter hasn’t been the Tigers’ best player this year, his penchant for hitting tape measure home runs in key spots has played a critical role in the Tigers’ run of success going back to last season. In fact, his penchant for clutch blasts has helped popularize the use of the nickname “Kerry Bonds”, although the origins of that moniker are bit trickier to track down.

Here is what we know about the origins of Tigers star Kerry Carpenter’s “Kerry Bonds” nickname

Nickname origins can be tough, because they usually start as inside jokes that don’t exactly leave much of a paper trail. This is particularly true of the minor leagues, where you are lucky to find out why a guy is on the injured list, let alone where a nickname came from.

However, we do have some information to go on as to why Carpenter has gotten compared to arguably the greatest home run hitter of all time. The fine folks at Tigers Minor League Report tracked the nickname back to 2022 in a Discord server when Carpenter was going wild at Double-A, which does get us closer to the ballpark of a definitive answer.

However, it does seem as though the actual origin of “Kerry Bonds” seems to go back a little bit further to the minor league clubhouse. According to Carpenter’s minor league teammate and current Tigers reliever Beau Brieske, he came up with the nickname in the summer of 2022 as a bit of a joke while Carpenter was torching the minors, but was still a ways off from being a big leaguer slugger.

Time will tell if Carpenter’s label will stick, as he does have a tendency to be a bit streaky as a hitter, and he is already on record as not wanting to use the torpedo bats that have taken the baseball world by storm. However, it is certainly a fun story that goes a lot further back than these clutch homers that Carpenter has come up with early in 2025.

The next time you hear Dan Dickerson in the broadcast booth gleefully gush over Kerry Bonds’ latest tapemeasure shot, you can likely thank a member of the vaunted Tigers bullpen (or a very serendipitous moment during the summer of 2022 when an inside joke hit the public consciousness). Now, we just need to find out whether Kerry enjoys it or not as it’s gone more mainstream.