Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh among MLB stars who have milestones within reach during stretch run
Published in Baseball
NEW YORK — Cal Raleigh might not be done making history just yet.
When the Seattle Mariners slugger struck his 55th home run of the year on Tuesday night, he broke a tie with Mickey Mantle to set a new single-season record for homers by a switch-hitter.
And when Raleigh clubbed his 56th home run in his very next at-bat, he tied Ken Griffey Jr. for the Mariners’ single-season record.
Passing Griffey is next on Raleigh’s to-do list, but it’s not the only milestone the man known as Big Dumper has a realistic chance at reaching.
Here’s a look at the history that Raleigh and other MLB players can make as the regular season nears its end.
Raleigh
Raleigh’s latest home run surge has him within striking distance of 60 home runs.
If he can get there, Raleigh would become the fourth American League player — and the first non-Yankee — to hit 60 in a season.
Babe Ruth hit 60 in 1927, and Roger Maris broke his record with 61 in 1961. The AL single-season record now belongs to Aaron Judge, who hit 62 homers in 2022.
Raleigh entered Wednesday with 11 games left and needed four homers to finish with 60, six to tie Judge’s record and seven to pass him.
He was on pace for 60 home runs.
Judge
Judge entered Wednesday with 48 home runs, leaving him two away from the fourth 50-homer season of his career.
That was notable, considering Judge would become the fourth player in MLB history with four 50-homer campaigns.
The others? Ruth, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.
Ruth hit at least 50 home runs in 1920, 1921, 1927 and 1928.
McGwire did it in four consecutive seasons from 1996-1999.
Sosa, too, did it four years in a row from 1997-2000.
Judge is already one of only five players with three 50-homer seasons, along with the aforementioned trio and Alex Rodriguez.
Shohei Ohtani
Practically every year, Ohtani finds a new way to make unique history.
The Los Angeles Dodgers’ two-way sensation did so on Tuesday night when he struck out his 50th batter as a pitcher and smacked his 50th homer as a hitter, making him the first player ever to accomplish that kind of 50/50 season.
Last year, Ohtani became the first player to hit 50 homers and steal 50 bases in a single year.
Ohtani is the heavy favorite to win the National League MVP this year, which would mark the fourth MVP Award of his career.
That would make him only the second player in MLB history with four MVPs. The other is Barry Bonds, who won a whopping seven.
50-homer frenzy
Should Judge get to 50 homers, he would become the fourth player this season to reach that number, joining Raleigh, Ohtani and Kyle Schwarber of the Philadelphia Phillies.
It would be the first time since 2001 that four players hit at least 50 homers in the same season.
That year, Barry Bonds broke the single-season record with 73 homers, while Sosa, Rodriguez and Luis Gonzalez each eclipsed 50.
Mets mashers
Juan Soto has an outside chance at becoming the seventh player to deliver a 40/40 season.
He entered Wednesday with 32 stolen bases, meaning he would need eight in the final 11 games to achieve the feat.
But perhaps more likely was that Pete Alonso would join Soto in the 40-homer club, which would mark the first instance in the Mets’ 64-year history that two of their players hit 40 homers in the same season.
Alonso began the day with 35, so he would need to up his pace a bit in order to do so.
Soto is the fifth player in Mets history to hit 40 home runs in a season. Alonso has done it three times.
No no-nos
No-hitters have become relatively commonplace in today’s era of strikeout-happy hitters and power-armed bullpens, but remarkably, there has not been one no-no in 2025.
This would be the first season since 2005 without a no-hitter and only the fifth since 1969.
The Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto came the closest on Sept. 6, but he surrendered his first hit with two outs in the ninth inning.
Last year, there were four no-hitters. In 2021, there were an MLB-record nine.
Mike Trout
The Los Angeles Angels star began Wednesday with 399 home runs in his career.
One more would make Trout the 58th player in MLB history to reach 400 homers, and only the second active player, joining Giancarlo Stanton.
Stanton
Speaking of Stanton, the Yankees slugger was on the verge of a round number, too.
Stanton entered Wednesday with 449 homers in his career, leaving him one away from becoming the 41st player to reach 450.
Max Scherzer
It would take a heavy lift, but Max Scherzer has a distant chance at reaching 3,500 career strikeouts before season’s end.
Scherzer is 18 strikeouts away and will likely make two more starts.
The 41-year-old does boast an 11-strikeout performance this year, but he has not struck out more than eight in any of his other 14 starts.
Scherzer would be the 11th player in MLB history with 3,500 strikeouts.
If he pitches again next season, he would have an excellent chance of cracking the top 10 on MLB’s all-time strikeout list. Walter Johnson (3,509) is only 27 ahead of Scherzer for 10th place.
Schwarber
With 12 RBIs in the final 10 games, Schwarber would become the first NL player since 2009 to drive in 140 runs in a season.
The last to do it were Ryan Howard and Prince Fielder, who had 141 RBIs apiece in 2009.
Last year, Judge became the first player in either league with at least 140 RBIs since that ’09 season.
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