Team Consecutive Home Run Record
Search Results for 'Four Consecutive Home Runs. The record-tying feat by taking Robinson. Only the seventh team to hit four consecutive home runs in an.
By Andrew Simon When Bryce Harper went 'only' 2-for-4 with a booming RBI double on Sunday against the Braves, it snapped his string of consecutive games with a home run at three. That's not an especially long streak, but Harper's put him only one shy of the Major League record. While Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hit streak is one of the best-known numbers in all of sports, homer streaks don't share quite the same prestige - and reside only in the realm of single digits. Still, they are impressive accomplishments, whether they come from an all-time great or an entirely unexpected source.
Let's take a look at some of the best, with an assist from the Baseball-Reference.com Play Index and the Elias Sports Bureau. THREE GAMES Homering in three consecutive games is not uncommon, but what the Dodgers' Shawn Green did from May 23-25, 2002, stands alone in baseball history.
After hitting 49 homers with a.970 OPS in 2001, Green got off to a slow start the next year, with a.231/.339/.346 line and three dingers through May 19. Then, over the next seven games, he went deep 10 times. That includes his in Milwaukee on May 23, when he went 6-for-6 with four homers, seven RBIs and a record 19 total bases. He followed that up with three more roundtrippers over the next two days and went on to smack 42 that season. Your browser does not support iframes. THREE (MULTI-HOMER) GAMES Harper, who followed up a three-homer game with days of two and then one, narrowly missed becoming the fifth player to string together three multi-homer efforts.
The only four men to have done that all homered a total of six times, and the first three each completed the task more than 45 years ago. The Philadelphia Athletics' Gus Zernial (1951), the Mets' Frank Thomas (1962) - no, not that Frank Thomas - and the Reds' Lee May all reached at least 237 career homers and made at least one All-Star team, though none were Hall of Famers. But the fourth member of this exclusive club also is by far the least likely. When June 2003 began, Angels outfielder Jeff DaVanon was a 29-year-old with nine career home runs and was starting because of an injury to Darin Erstad. Then, on June 1 at Tampa Bay, he homered twice. Following an off-day, he did the same thing the next two days against the Expos at Puerto Rico's Hiram Bithorn Stadium. As it turned out, those were the only three multi-homer games of DaVanon's career, though he did hit for the cycle a year later.
When DaVanon's big league tenure ended in 2007, those six historic homers accounted for 18.2 percent of his career total. FOUR GAMES Two of the greatest four-game home run binges occurred within the span of one month almost 70 years ago.
Oh, and they were put together by the same man. In 1947, the Pirates' Ralph Kiner was 24 years old and in his second big league season, just starting a Hall of Fame career.
13-17, he slammed seven homers over four days, then topped himself from Sept. 10-12 by launching eight, including four over the course of a doubleheader on Sept. Kiner went on to homer 51 times that season, his second of seven in a row leading the National League. Just five players besides Kiner have finished a four-game streak with seven home runs. The only one to do it since 1976 is a player who managed 40 bombs over his entire time in the Majors. That would be Hee-Seop Choi, a highly touted prospect out of South Korea whose U.S.
Career never quite took off. But from June 10-13, 2005, Choi was everything anyone had ever hoped he would be. Playing first base for the Dodgers, he homered in each game of a three-game set against the Twins in Los Angeles, including a three-homer game on June 12, then followed up an off-day by hitting one more against the Royals in Kansas City. Unfortunately, Choi added only two more the rest of the season, spent the next in Triple-A with the Red Sox and has played in his home country ever since. FIVE GAMES The record for homers over a five-game streak is eight, held by Frank Howard and Barry Bonds. But we'll get to them below, so let's focus instead on the best postseason streak of all time. It's a shame that when many fans think of Carlos Beltran in the playoffs, they likely think of him taking a called third strike from Adam Wainwright to end the 2006 NLCS.
Albert Belle
After all, Beltran is a.333/.445/.683 hitter over 51 career postseason games. But he has never been hotter than in his first taste of October, for the 2004 Astros, who had acquired him from Kansas City that June. Between an NLDS win over the Braves and an NLCS loss to the Cardinals - in a thrilling seven-game series - Beltran hit.435 with a 1.557 OPS, and 14 RBIs over 12 games. He went deep twice to help Houston win a decisive Game 5 at Atlanta, when added one dinger apiece in each of the first four contests against St. Louis, accomplishing something unique.
Your browser does not support iframes. SIX GAMES In 1968, the so-called 'year of the pitcher,' the American League as a whole hit.230 with a.637 OPS, and four of 10 teams failed to reach 100 home runs, with the White Sox bringing up the rear at 71. In that context, what the Washington Senators' Frank Howard did that season was all the more remarkable. A 31-year-old veteran at the time, Howard walloped 44 homers to lead the Majors by eight, while slugging a league-best.552.
His best stretch came from May 12-18, when he went deep 10 times over six games, including four two-homer efforts. It was an entirely different era in 2001, when Barry Bonds mashed a record 73 home runs. Any asterisks aside, pretty much any Bonds-related number from that time falls somewhere between absurd and seemingly impossible, and his output from May 17-22 that year is no exception. Before this six-game burst began, Bonds already sported a.739 slugging percentage, and he somehow raised it by 180 points.
That's what happens when you blast nine homers while batting.550 over such a small window. The damage included a three-homer day at Atlanta on May 19. SEVEN GAMES Related Articles. Of the four seven-game streaks on record, three belong to Don Mattingly (nine HR in 1987), Bonds (eight in 2004) and Jim Thome (seven in 2002). And then there's Kevin Mench? Yes, the longest homer streak by a right-hander in baseball history belongs to a player who went yard 89 times over a modest eight-year career and who, according to an, 'was already known for a big head - literally, his size-8 camp being the largest in the Major Leagues.' The man called 'Shrek' found out in April 2006 that he had been wearing cleats a half-size too small for his entire career, which had caused a sprained toe early that year.
Ken Griffey Jr Consecutive Home Run Record
Now armed (footed?) with the appropriate gear, the Rangers outfielder smacked a grand slam on April 21 against Tampa Bay, the proceeded to homer once in each of the, including another slam on the 26th against Oakland. Over the seven games, Mench slugged 1.172 and collected 19 RBIs. And when it was over? EIGHT GAMES In 1951, Dale Long debuted in the Majors, playing 44 games, but he didn't make it back until '55, his age-29 season. When he finally got his shot, the Pirates first baseman took advantage. He led the league with 13 triples that year and posted a 132 OPS+, then followed it up with an All-Star campaign in '56.
Home Run Record In A Season
On May 19 that year, he homered against the Cubs, the start of an NL-record eight-game streak that reportedly led the Pirates' general manager to and give him a $2,500 raise - up to $15,500. Long also apparently came close to a ninth homer, against the Dodgers' Don Newcombe on May 29, hitting a shot that had the misfortune of heading toward Forbes Field's left-center field wall, 457 feet away. A little more than 30 years later, in 1987, Yankees first baseman Don Mattingly, smacking one-third of his season total over a blistering July stretch surrounding the All-Star Game. The current Dodgers manager hit.459 over the eight games, with 10 homers (including two slams) and 21 RBIs.
Almost exactly six years later, another sweet-swinging lefty recorded an eight-game streak, as a 23-year-old Ken Griffey Jr. Homered eight times and drove in 14 runs for the Mariners from July 20-28.
The final homer was a off the facade of the upper deck at the Kingdome. Griffey, with his father as his hitting coach, nearly took the record for himself the next day but off the center-field wall. Nobody has matched him since. Your browser does not support iframes. Andrew Simon is a contributor to Sports On Earth and a reporter for MLB.com.