LAST year we started a series on monthly data--10+ homers in a month--which stalled in the 1990s. (The uptick in the frequency of that feat was frankly a bit flummoxing, plus we had a book of French noir to finish.)
We'll be getting back to the rest of that series next month, after we cover some other "monthly" events that are unrelated to homers. (We get what they used to call "tired blood" when we are forced to talk about homers all the time...)
So first we'll have monthly doubles, then triples (what a surprise that is!) and we will even get gob-smackingly generic and look at plain old hits before we condescend back into home runs...
EXCEPT for today's post. Here we correct an omission in the 10+ HRs in a month data set by catching you up with all of those incidences in 2024, plus the first three 10+ HR monthly mashers for April 2025. As you'll see there are a couple of names on this list that have a habit of recurring...
WE figure you know which folks we were referred to when we made that last remark...those two homer-hitting behemoths in 2024 who met in the World Series and didn't continue their outsized exploits in what some folks have taken to calling the "Fall Fizzle."
But Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani each had three 10+ HR months last year, with four of the six being real barnburners of a month (as those monthly OPS averages demonstrate). Judge's 14 HRs last May was the highest total in any month during 2024, with Anthony Santander the runner-up with his 13 big flies in June. (Ohtani hit 12 HRs in a month twice--in June and in August--but it was his September that caught folks' imaginations--"only" 10 HRs, but .393 BA for the month plus sixteen stolen bases without being caught as Sho-Time became baseball's first 50-50 player.
August was the big month for 10+ HRs--a total of eight. There were two sets of teammates who hit 10+ HRs in the same month: the A's Brent Rooker and Lawrence Butler did it in July, while Judge and Juan Soto matched the A's duo in August.
WE'VE also tacked on the three 10+ HR achievers for the first month of the 2025 season. Judge had another monster month, hitting over .400 and massing a 1.282 OPS to go with his 10 HRs. Eugenio Suarez tacked on another 10+ HR month despite hitting just .200 in April '25. (He'd hit much better in July '24, with a BA of .333: April '25 was more like the usual Suarez performance: 10 HRs and just six singles for the month.
Ohtani seems to have a jump on another 10+ HR month in May; he's sitting on nine for the month as we type this. Stay tuned...
