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An automatic home run is achieved by hitting the ball on the fly over the outfield fence in fair territory. More rarely, an inside-the-park home run occurs when the hitter reaches home plate while the baseball remains in play on the field. In Major League Baseball , a player in each league wins the home run title each season by hitting the most home runs that year. Only home runs hit in a particular league count towards that league's seasonal lead.
Schwarber put himself in this position thanks to a torrid June and July. After a lull in August , Schwarber got hot again, slugging 10 homers from September 1st to the end of the regular season. When Kyle Schwarber signed with the Phillies, many people wondered what kind of home run production they’d see from the slugger. After all, he’d be playing half his games in a hitter-friendly Citizens Bank Park. As we’ll see below, he hit another 45 in 2009, making it four straight years with at least that many dingers to start his career. Once again, the left-handed slugger started slow-ish out of the gate for the Phillies…at least, he did in the power department.
Major League Baseball Batting Leaders
Mark McGwire, for example, hit 58 home runs in 1997, more than any other player that year. David Ortiz’s first career postseason home run came from Mike Mussina in Game 1 of the 2003 ALCS. “Big Papi” followed up with another homer from David Wells in Game 7 of that same series. Nevertheless, Ortiz became a legend in 2004, hitting two walk-off homers in that postseason. The first was off Jarrod Washburn in Game 3 of the 2004 ALDS, then off Paul Quantrill in the 14th inning of the ALCS, throttling a Boston Red Sox comeback in the series.
His performance included a walk-off shot in the bottom of the 11th inning of Game 2 off of Ryan Perry. In 2021, Cruz became the 11th player to hit a postseason homer after turning 40. Among the most in a single season in Phillies history, to be exact.
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Please note that players may not be in the uniform of the correct team in these images. Become a Stathead today and run queries with our Season and Career Finders to see the best seasons in MLB history. Babe Ruth was first or second in the American League in home runs for every season from 1918 through 1933 except 1922 and set the single-season home run record four times. Much of the play-by-play, game results, and transaction information both shown and used to create certain data sets was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by RetroSheet.
Ruth set the Major League Baseball single-season home run record four times, first at 29 , then 54 , 59 , and finally 60 . Ruth's 1920 and 1921 seasons are tied for the widest margin of victory for a home run champion as he topped the next highest total by 35 home runs in each season. The single season mark of 60 stood for 34 years until Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in 1961 for which MLB assigned an asterisk until reversing themselves in 1991 citing Maris had accomplished his record in a longer season. Maris' mark was broken 37 years later by both Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa during the 1998 home run record chase, with McGwire ultimately setting a new record of 70. Barry Bonds, who also has the most career home runs, then broke that mark, setting the current single season record of 73 in 2001.
List of Major League Baseball annual home run leaders
So, naturally, he did it in consecutive months to finish out the season in August and September. Over his final 280 plate appearances, his OPS was up at 1.069 and was accompanied by a .450 wOBA and 188 wRC+. His most powerful month of the year came in September/October, as he slugged 13 homers in 145 trips to the plate.
This list also includes Hall of Famers Mel Ott, Joe DiMaggio, Eddie Mathews and Johnny Bench, two-time MVP Juan Gonzalez and three-time MVP Alex Rodriguez. Jose Cruz of the Houston Astros had his number twenty-five retired on October 3, 1992, and became the first Major League player with that particular retired number. He also added an incredible 488-foot home run in the postseason that we’re all still in awe of. Sammy Sosa led the National League in home runs twice, with 49 and 50, but finished second four times with home run counts of 36, 66, 63, and 64. Alex Rodriguez led the American League in home runs five times, three with the Texas Rangers and twice with the New York Yankees. Ken Griffey Jr. led the American League in home runs in four seasons during the 1990s, including three consecutively from 1997 to 1999.
Altuve’s first three postseason homers came in the same, putting up a three-homer showing in Game 1 of the 2017 ALDS against the Boston Red Sox. While he’s hit his fair share of first-inning home runs, Altuve’s most iconic blast came in Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS. The 2017 AL MVP hit a walk-off shot against Aroldis Chapman to send Houston to the World Series.
While eight players have won a league home run crown before turning 23, it’s never happened in both leagues during the same year. It's the first time that the first 5 players to reach 40 HR in a season were all born in different countries. Jim Thome finds his way on this list while also being heavily featured on the Guardians‘ single-season home run leaderboard.
While Aaron Judge is head-and-shoulders ahead of everyone in the home run department for 2022, Schwarber is the National League and Phillies leader. He’s already set a new career-high mark, and the question now is just where he’s going to land before the season finishes up. The and seasons were the only other years that had two of the three, and there was never a year prior to 2021 in which a catcher and a second baseman or a second baseman and a shortstop both went deep 40-plus times. There have been years in which multiple players reached the 60-homer plateau. Listed are all Major League Baseball players with 223 or more home runs hit during official regular-season games (i.e., excluding playoffs or exhibition games). Players in bold face are active as of the 2022 Major League Baseball season , with the number in parenthesis designating the number of home runs they have hit during the 2022 season.
In the sport of baseball, a home run is a hit in which the batter scores by circling all the bases and reaching home plate in one play, without the benefit of a fielding error. This can be accomplished either by hitting the ball out of play while it is still in fair territory , or by an inside-the-park home run. Mark McGwire led the league in home runs 4 times including 52, 65, and record-breaking 70 home run seasons. His 58 home runs in 1997 led neither league due to a mid-season trade which split this total across 2 leagues. Then there's Ohtani, who is the first player to post a 40-homer season while also throwing 100-plus innings on the mound, just one of many unprecedented feats for the two-way superstar.
Of the four players to break Maris' record, one has since admitted to the use of performance-enhancing substances during his playing career and two others are both widely suspected to have used such substances as well. The 1998 and 2001 seasons each had four players hit 50 or more home runs – Greg Vaughn, Ken Griffey Jr., Sosa, and McGwire in 1998 and Alex Rodriguez, Luis Gonzalez, Sosa, and Bonds in 2001. A player has hit 50 or more home runs 42 times, 25 times since 1990. The lowest home run total to lead a major league was four, recorded in the NL by Lip Pike in 1877 and Paul Hines in 1878.
The last change in the cutoff for the top 300 occurred on September 11, 2022, when Eugenio Suarez hit his 223rd career home run, displacing Jason Bay and Don Mattingly. Perez would have had the best chance of getting there, as he blasted 11 dingers in 37 games. This is the first time in MLB history that 3 players who had never previously had a 30-HR season all hit 45+ HR in the same year. According to Stats Perform, this is the first time that three players who had never previously reached the 30-homer plateau all hit 45 or more in the same year. Through his first 118 plate appearances, he had just five homers and 12 RBI while posting a .640 OPS.
