Last night Carlos Pena hit his 13th homer of the year, setting the Tampa Bay franchise record with 129 homers as a member of the Rays. Here’s the rest of the top 10:
CARLOS PENA 129 Aubrey Huff 128 Fred McGriff 99 Carl Crawford 90 Evan Longoria 71 Jonny Gomes 66 Greg Vaughn 60 B.J. Upton 55 Rocco Baldelli 52 Ben Zobrist 47
You know a team hasn’t been around very long when only four players in franchise history have more homers than the MLB single-season record. Slightly more impressive than topping Aubrey Huff for the Rays’ record is Pena’s homer rank among all players over the past four seasons:
Ryan Howard 150 Prince Fielder 139 Adam Dunn 131 Albert Pujols 130 CARLOS PENA 129 Alex Rodriguez 127 Miguel Cabrera 123 Adrian Gonzalez 119 Ryan Braun 111 Mark Teixeira 111
Particularly impressive once you consider that Pena missed the final 25 games of last season when a CC Sabathia fastball to the left hand broke two fingers. Despite that injury he still has more homers than anyone else in the AL since 2007. Of course, Pena is also hitting just .186 with a league-high 66 strikeouts so far this season, so it’ll be interesting to see what kind of market there is for the 32-year-old impending free agent this winter. My guess is he won’t be back in Tampa Bay.