MLB's single-season home run record has been broken with 12 days left in the season (original) (raw)

The 30 major-league teams has made collective home run history. On Tuesday night, Alex Gordon of the Royals hit the 5,694th home run of the season.

The single-season home run record, as such, has fallen. Considering the record was broken before the late games even started on Tuesday and moving forward there are 12 days left in the season, the record is going to be shattered.

Here is Gordon's record-breaker:

Here are the five highest single-season home run totals in baseball history:

  1. 2017: 5,694 through Gordon's homer
  2. 2000: 5,693
  3. 2016: 5,610
  4. 1999: 5,528
  5. 2001: 5,458

Heading into Tuesday, there had been 1.26 home runs per team per game this season -- so that's 2.52 homers per game between the two teams -- which is far and away the highest rate in history. The current record is 1.17 homers per team per game in 2000.

There were, heading into Tuesday, 108 players with 20-plus home runs this season, three short of tying the record set last year. Another 15 players have at least 18 home runs this season, so we will eventually see a record for number of 20-homer hitters this season as well.

It has been no secret home runs are up around baseball -- they've actually been up since the 2015 All-Star break -- and there has been widespread speculation the ball is juiced and changes to the baseball have allowed it to travel farther.

Major League Baseball of course denies the ball is juiced. It should be noted it is possible changes have been made to the ball, perhaps unintentionally, that have led to it flying out of the park even while conforming to MLB standards. For now, the league denies it.

Either way, juiced ball or not, we are going to see way more home runs hit this season than ever before. The record already fell Tuesday night, plus there are still another 168 games to be played the remainder of the season.