But it is refreshing to know that some events really are still rare. Such as the four-homer night that Eugenio Suarez had yesterday. It was just the seventeenth time since 1901 that the feat was accomplished. (It happened twice in the 1890s as well: we wave through the gauze at Bobby Lowe and Ed Delahanty.)
Suarez had hit three homers in a game twice previously: in 2020 while with the Reds, and again last season in his first year with the Diamondbacks. (And we'll let you guess for awhile longer about how many times hitters have hit three homers in a game...)
The launch angle era hasn't produced an uptick in 4-homer games; the last time it happened was in 2017 (J.D. Martinez, also for the D-backs, against the Dodgers). As feats go, it's tricky: that last time up seems to be an especially difficult one to navigate. Suarez has seen his BA drop through the floor in this decade: he had a lifetime average of .265 through 2019, but that's dipped to just .228 since 2020. His power has remained steady, however, and that has kept him gainfully employed thus far this decade. (That's due in part to a long-term contract he signed shortly after he joined the Reds; he's a free agent this offseason.)
Suarez' feat comes with several anomalies, but before we go there let's take a look at who else is on the list:
Some very big names here--Gehrig, Klein, Hodges, Colavito, Mays, Schmidt, Delgado, J.D. Martinez.
And other solid if lesser sluggers: Adcock, Horner, Green, Josh Hamilton.
And then there are the rest: Seerey, Whiten, Cameron and Gennett.
Suarez probably belongs in that second group: after all, he has nearly 300 lifetime homers (the exact number, as of this writing: 286). If we look at these hitters by the most number of homers they hit in a season, he's close to the top of the heap: only Gehrig and Mays have hit as many or more. (Suarez slammed 49 HRs with the Reds in 2019.)
Finally, the data above shows that he's in rarer company still:
1) He's just the second hitter to hit four homers in a game since 1901 to do so when his team lost the game (the other one: Horner, in 1986).
2) And he's the oldest player to do so, at 33 years, 282 days--more than two years older than Chuck Klein.
Something else that pops out from the data details: no 4-HR game guy has managed to steal a base in that same game. (Of course, only six of the seventeen players shown here were actually parked at first base during their 4-HR games: two via walks, and four via singles.)
SO now we sit back and wait to see if someone else can duplicate this feat in 2025...if so, it would be only the third time that two hitters have hit four homers in a game during the same season. Stay tuned...
