TODAY’S SPORTSTAT — Braun doubles his pleasure
By JERRY TAPP
When it comes to games with two or more home runs, Ryan Braun is the king for the Milwaukee Brewers.
In the span of four days, Braun hit a pair of home runs in two games; Braun hit a pair against the St. Louis Cardinals on September 25 and then hit two against the Detroit Tigers on September 28.
Braun tops the Milwaukee franchise with the most multi-home run games in a career with 32. He is followed by Prince Fielder with 22 and Gorman Thomas with 19. Braun is, however, nowhere near the leader board when it comes to the most multi-HR games in MLB history. Leading the way is Babe Ruth with 72 followed by Barry Bonds with 71. Others with 60 or more career multi-HR games: Sammy Sosa (69), Mark McGwire (67), Willie Mays (63) and Hank Aaron and Alex Rodriguez (each with 62).
The Brewers have had five players hit two or more home runs in a game this season. Braun has done it four times followed by Jesus Aguilar with three games. The other three Brewers players with multi-HR games this year (each with one game) are Keon Broxton, Eric Thames and Christian Yelich.
Following are the MLB players with the most multi-HR games in a season.
11: Sammy Sosa, 1998; Hank Greenberg, 1938
10: Giancarlo Stanton, 2017; Sammy Sosa, 2001; Alex Rodriguez, 2002; Albert Pujols, 2009; Mark McGwire, 1998; Ralph Kiner, 1947; Jimmie Foxx, 1938; Barry Bonds, 2001.
9: David Ortiz, 2005; Mark McGwire, 1999; Willie Mays, 1955; Andruw Jones, 2005; George Bell, 1987; Jose Bautista, 2010.
Robin Yount holds the Brewers record for most games with two or more home runs in a season with seven (he did it in 1982). Gorman Thomas had six multi-HR games, also in 1982, while Richie Sexson had six in 2001. Braun had six multi-HR games in both 2012 and 2016.
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Jerry Tapp
Jerry Tapp is a freelance writer from Racine, WI with a major concentration on sports statistics and numbers that define sports teams and players. He began his foray into sports stats-focused writing as a regular contributor to the “Numbers” column in Inside Sports magazine in the mid-1980’s and then began writing a weekly “Stats on Tapp” column for the Racine Journal Times. That column was eventually nationally syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate. He later wrote sports stats items for the Washington Post under the “Stat of the Day” heading. After launching his blog, www.statsontapp.com in 2011, Jerry turned his sports stats attention to sports websites. He wrote regularly for Bleacher Report, BallHyped, football.com and Heavy.com. Today he keeps busy writing weekly columns of stats-centric articles for three sports websites, Today’s Pigskin (NFL), Today’s Knuckleball (MLB) and Today’s Fastbreak (NBA), and as a monthly contributor to the Milwaukee Brewers “GameDay” publication that is distributed to fans attending games at Miller Park.