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