Will Someone Hit This Magical Number of Homers in 2025?

Nobody in MLB history has finished a season with this many dingers. Seriously.

Major League Baseball has a long and storied history. It’s been around since 1871, and more than 20,000 players have suited up for at least one game. But when it comes to hitting home runs, only a small percentage of sluggers have proven to be among the game’s elite.

When we’re looking at career accomplishments, only 28 players are in the 500-homer club. Nine of them have slugged at least 600 taters, and just four have surpassed 700. When it comes to a single season, there have been nearly 370 occurrences of 40-plus homers and just 50 different occasions of someone slugging 50-plus dingers.

The 2024 season had several of them—Juan Soto (41) and Anthony Santander (44) surpassed the 40-homer plateau. Aaron Judge (58) reached the half-century mark for the third (!) time, while Shohei Ohtani (54) did it for the first time.

Ohtani’s total is especially interesting because he just missed making his first year with the Los Angeles Dodgers even more special (in my eyes, at least).

Nobody Has Hit Exactly 55 Home Runs in a Season…

…But there have been oh so many close calls. Ohtani’s performance was just the latest.

There have been three different seasons of 56 homers, accomplished by two players. The first was done by Hack Wilson in 1930 with the Chicago Cubs. Ken Griffey Jr. owns the other two, which he did in back-to-back seasons for the Seattle Mariners from 1997-98.

But when a slugger reaches the 50-homer plateau, the chance of him finishing the year with 54 taters is greater than any other number. Someone has gone deep that often in a season nine times in MLB history. Here’s a list of each occurrence, including the player, team, and year it happened:

• Babe Ruth, New York Yankees: 1920

• Babe Ruth, New York Yankees: 1928

• Ralph Kiner, Pittsburgh Pirates: 1949

• Mickey Mantle, New York Yankees: 1961

• David Ortiz, Boston Red Sox: 2004

• Alex Rodriguez, New York Yankees: 2007

• Jose Bautista, Toronto Blue Jays: 2010

• Matt Olson, Atlanta Braves: 2023

• Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Dodgers: 2024

The performances from Kiner, Ortiz, Bautista, Olson, and Ohtani are franchise records for their respective teams. It’s also crazy that the Yankees make up nearly half of this list.

Will Someone Finally Do It in 2025?

Hitting 55 homers in a season is quite literally one of the most elusive accomplishments in Major League Baseball. But of course, this also means a hitter must first reach the half-century mark before even thinking about finishing with 55 taters.

And as we’ve already established, the 50 homers in a season club is an exclusive group. Who has the best shot at making it happen, though?

Two obvious choices are Judge and Ohtani. I mean, they just had a chance to do it in 2024. Judge has shown that getting to 50 homers is somewhat easily attainable for him these days, so he’s always a threat. It will be interesting to see how Ohtani balances hitting and pitching again, but it’s not like it was a problem for him in the past. He’s already racked up two seasons of 40-plus homers while playing on both sides of the ball.

Pete Alonso has a 50-homer performance and two other 40-homer efforts under his belt, so there’s a possibility there. I also think Kyle Schwarber and Yordan Alvarez have a shot if they go on prolonged power binges (or Schwarber just always acts like it’s the month of June).

Of all the things we should be keeping an eye on this season, this will certainly be one of them for me. Because why wouldn’t it be?