The Blue Jays have accomplished a couple of notable feats in the past few days with home runs. The first happened on Wednesday night when John Buck homered, his 20th of the season, to become the 6th different Blue Jays to hit 20 home runs this year. They became only the 18th team in MLB history to have six hitters to hit at least 20 home runs each. If Edwin Encarnacion manages to hit two home runs in the last three games of the season (he currently has 18 HRs), the team will become only the 5th team to ever have seven players with at least 20 home runs, joining the 1996 Orioles, 2005 Rangers, 2009 Yankees, and the 2000 Blue Jays. No National League team has ever done it, possibly because they would need seven out of eight of their starting position players to do it as opposed to seven out of nine in the American League. One final note is that Alex Gonzalez, traded to the Braves midseason for Yunel Escobar, had 17 home runs as a Jay (only 6 so far with the Braves) and Escobar (who had 0 home runs as a Brave) has 4 home runs as a Jay. So the shortstop position for the Jays also has hit 20+ home runs, which means that the Jays possibly could have become the first team to ever have 8 players hit at least 20 home runs each (if they hadn't traded for Escobar, which I'm glad they did, and if EE hits 2 homers in the next three games).
On a related note, after Thursday night's blowout of the Twins, in which the Jays hit six home runs, they now have 253 home runs as a team so far this year. That is the 4th highest total in MLB history, trailing only the 1997 Mariners (264 HRs), the 2005 Rangers (260 HRs), and the 1996 Orioles (257 HRs). If they continue their pace of 1.591 HRs per game over the final three games, they should end up with 257.77 home runs on the season, which would be good for third all-time. It is interesting to see many of the same teams on both of these lists (the '97 Mariners also had 6 players with at least 20 home runs). One great home run hitter will not vault your team into the home run record books, the team needs at least 5-6 hitters who all can hit at least 20+ home runs, with usually one or two of those players hitting at least 30 or more (Vernon Wells with 31 and Jose Bautista with 54 so far on this year's team).
One final note of interest: also in last night's game, Jose Bautista hit his 53rd and 54th home runs of the season. The first was an upper-deck grand slam, the second an opposite field home run, the first home run to right field in his career! (Unfortunately HitTracker hasn't quite updated his home run total, so we cannot view his home run scatter plot with the one outlier to right field.) Although pitchers next year may try to beat him with outside pitches, he has again proved that he can hit pretty much anything you throw to home. Sure, he would much rather hit an inside fastball (as the first home run showed!), but if you must continue to pound the outside corner, he will either take a good swing and put the ball into right field, or simply walk. Speaking of walks, Bautista needs one more walk this weekend to become only the 14th player to ever have 50 home runs and 100 walks in one season.
So although this weekend will not bring playoff drama for the Blue Jays, there are a couple of milestones that they could reach with good performances. Hopefully they can win a couple of games, hit a few more home runs, and end 2010 with a bang.
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