Twins second baseman Brian Dozier homered twice again three times on Monday afternoon, bringing his season total up to 38 and further extending his career-high. He’s also one dinger shy of tying the American League record for home runs hit by a second baseman, held by Alfonso Soriano who set the mark in 2002.
Mark Trumbo leads baseball with 41 home runs and is currently the only member of the 40-homer club. But Dozier and eight others are projected to join him in that club. Two others are projected to finish at 39, so even a slight uptick in power would add to the club. Baseball hasn’t seen 10 players hit 40-plus home runs in the same season since 2006, when 11 players accomplished the feat. For perspective, from 2011-14, there were 11 combined player-seasons with 40-plus dingers including multiple appearances by Curtis Granderson and Miguel Cabrera.
Here’s the list, updated for today’s games:
| Player | Team | Tm Gm | HR | Pace |
| Mark Trumbo | BAL | 136 | 41 | 48.8 |
| Brian Dozier | MIN | 138 | 38 | 44.6 |
| Nolan Arenado | COL | 136 | 36 | 42.9 |
| Kris Bryant | CHC | 136 | 36 | 42.9 |
| Edwin Encarnacion | TOR | 136 | 36 | 42.9 |
| Nelson Cruz | SEA | 136 | 35 | 41.7 |
| Todd Frazier | CWS | 136 | 35 | 41.7 |
| Khris Davis | OAK | 136 | 34 | 40.5 |
| Josh Donaldson | TOR | 136 | 34 | 40.5 |
| Chris Davis | BAL | 137 | 34 | 40.2 |
| Manny Machado | BAL | 136 | 33 | 39.3 |
| Chris Carter | MIL | 137 | 33 | 39.0 |
| Evan Longoria | TBR | 135 | 31 | 37.2 |
| Robinson Cano | SEA | 136 | 31 | 36.9 |
| David Ortiz | BOS | 136 | 31 | 36.9 |
| Mookie Betts | BOS | 136 | 30 | 35.7 |
As pointed out earlier this season, the 2016 campaign is seeing home runs hit at the second-highest rate in baseball history, second only to the 2000 season. 1.16 home runs are being hit per game compared to 1.17 in 2000. 1999 is in third place at 1.14. Only 1.01 home runs were hit per game in 2015.
Despite the power surge, run-scoring is still not close to the levels seen in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, even though we saw increases from 4.07 in 2014 to 4.25 in ’15 and 4.50 this year. That has a lot to do with the ever-increasing strikeout rate, currently at an even 8.00 strikeouts per game compared to 7.71 last year and 6.30 as recently as 2005.