For a franchise that has seemingly run out of records to break, the New York Yankees continue to find ways to reach new heights.
Giancarlo Stanton’s solo home run in the fifth inning of Sunday’s 6-2 win over the Oakland Athletics put him at the 10-home-run mark in the team’s 40th game this season. He became the fourth Yankee — Aaron Judge (11), Gary Sanchez (10), Didi Gregorius (10) — to reach the double-digit round-tripper mark already this year.
It’s the first time in franchise history that the Yankees have four 10-home-run hitters through the first 40 games of a given season. In fact, they never had as many 10-home-run hitters through 50 games, either as ESPN.com’s Coley Harvey pointed out that the most New York had through 20 games was just two.
The last team to pull off such a feat was the 2003 Texas Rangers, which featured Alex Rodriguez, Rafael Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez and Carl Everett. Rodriguez would lead the league with 47 home runs on his way to his first-career American League MVP Award. That winter, he would be traded to the Yankees.
This is exactly what we expected from the Yankees, though.
Stanton was coming off of a 59-home-run 2017 in which he won the National League MVP as a member of the Miami Marlins. It was the most home runs hit in a single season since Barry Bonds’ legendary 2001 campaign in which he set the MLB single-season record with 73 long balls.
Judge set a league record last year, launching 52 home runs, the most ever recorded by a rookie. He was also the first American Leaguer to belt more than 50 home runs since Chris Davis put up 53 with the Baltimore Orioles in 2013.
Sanchez has quickly become the best hitting catcher in baseball, hitting 33 home runs in his first full season in the majors last year. His average has been cause for concern at .209, but he’s batting .400 over his last four games.
While he shouldn’t be much of an afterthought, that’s exactly what Didi Gregorius is when it comes to the power department. But his 10 home runs over the first 25 games of the 2018 season helped the Yankees navigate through a mediocre start through the opening 18 games of the year. While he’s cooled off since then, he is still on pace to better his career-high of 25 last year, which set a Yankees franchise record for most home runs by a shortstop in a single season.
Even with this new record in hand, the Yankees are on pace to hit 231 home runs this season, which would fall well short of the MLB record set by the 1997 Seattle Mariners with 264.
