Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Players who led the AL & NL in HRs by 10 or more

Thru yesterday Aaron Judge had 43 HRs and the next highest in both the AL & NL was Kyle Schwarber with 33. If Judge can maintain that lead, he will join a pretty good group.

The table below shows all the occurrences, with the first coming in 1899 by Buck Freeman. Babe Ruth did it 6 times, including leading by 35 twice. Ralph Kiner and Jimmie Foxx are the only others to do it more than once, with each guy doing it twice.

Ruth and Hack Wilson were the second place guy twice each. Ten different players have done it before this year with four of them being Hall of Famers: Ruth, Kiner, Foxx and Mays.

Of the ten cases before this year and since 1931, five of them were voted MVP by the BBWAA – Baseball Writers' Association of America. They were Foxx (1932-33), Mays 1965, Foster 1977 and Mitchell 1989.

See Year-by-Year Top-Tens Leaders & Records for Home Runs from BB Ref.

Year

Leader

HR

Second

HR

Diff

2022

Judge

43

Schwarber

33

10

2010

Bautista

54

Pujols

42

12

1995

Belle

50

Thomas

40

10

 

 

 

Bichette

40

 

 

 

 

Buhner

40

 

1990

Fielder

51

Sandberg

40

11

1989

Mitchell

47

Johnson

36

11

 

 

 

McGriff

36

 

1977

Foster

52

Burroughs

41

11

1965

Mays

52

McCovey

39

13

1950

Kiner

47

Rosen

37

10

1949

Kiner

54

Williams

43

11

1933

Foxx

48

Ruth

34

14

1932

Foxx

58

Ruth

41

17

1928

Ruth

54

Wilson

31

23

1926

Ruth

47

Wilson

21

26

1924

Ruth

46

Fournier

27

19

 

 

 

Hauser

27

 

1921

Ruth

59

Meusel

24

35

 

 

 

Williams

24

 

1920

Ruth

54

Sisler

19

35

1919

Ruth

29

Cravath

12

17

1899

Freeman

25

Wallace

12

13

 

There were 18 other cases of a leader of one league being at least 10 ahead of second place in his own league that are not already listed here. Here are the years that happened in each league.

AL: 1923, 1929, 1956, 1964, 1966, 1978, 1997, 2006

NL: 1915, 1922, 1923, 1925, 1930, 1940, 1943, 1964, 1980, 2017

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