Top 22 Single-Season Diamondbacks Home Run Leaders

Last Updated on November 29, 2023 by Matt Musico

As you can tell, we here at MLB Daily Dingers enjoy chronicling baseball’s home run history in just about every way imaginable. We’ve looked at the league’s all-time and single-season home run leaders and also checked out each organization’s all-time and single-season home run kings. Now, we’re going to build out each MLB team’s home run leaderboard. After starting with the Arizona Diamondbacks’ all-time home run list, we’re moving to Diamondbacks home run leaders for a single season.

Let’s take a deeper look at the top five before listing out the remainder of the top-22 home run-hitting seasons in DBacks history.

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Diamondbacks Home Run Leaders: Top 5

Table of Contents

Luis Gonzalez: 57 Home Runs in 2001

Luis Gonzalez was probably just one of those players who blossomed later than expected. However, thanks to his career happening during the midst of the steroid era, there will likely always be some people who raise their eyebrows at his 2001 performance.

Gonzo’s first half is what powered this career year. Through his first 388 plate appearances, he slashed .355/.443/.746 with 35 homers and 86 RBI. He enjoyed three months with at least 10 homers, with April being the best (13 homers). It’s not as if his production fell off after that, though. In fact, his overall offensive performance in multiple situations was a sight to be seen.

Whether he was home or away or facing a right-handed pitcher or a left-handed pitcher, his OPS was greater than 1.000. The same could be said when peeking at his first- and second-half splits. Even when his production is broken down monthly, the only time he didn’t finish with a 1.000-plus OPS was September (.886).

Mark Reynolds: 44 Home Runs in 2009

Mark Reynolds enjoyed four different seasons of 30-plus homers as a big leaguer. Three of those instances came consecutively, and it began with this 44-homer campaign in 2009. He spent 13 years in the majors, but this three-year span accounted for 113 of his 252 total homers, which is just over 44%.

As mentioned in the Diamondbacks’ all-time home run leaders, this was also the first of three straight times Reynolds led the league in strikeouts (223). He put his best overall year together in 2009, though, as he’d never again match his 3.3 fWAR or 127 wRC+, which helped him place 20th in National League MVP voting.

Reynolds was quite consistent when looking at his first- and second-half splits. Prior to the All-Star Game, he slugged 24 homers with a .888 OPS, while he hit the other 20 dingers after the midsummer classic, which was accompanied by a .898 OPS. Those 44 homers are the most by a third baseman during a single season in DBacks history.

Jay Bell: 38 Home Runs in 1999

The 1999 season was a monster campaign for Jay Bell. It also proved to be the last hurrah for his career from the standpoint of above-average production. In more than 1,200 plate appearances from 1997-98, Bell slugged 41 homers. He needed just 688 in ’99 to slug 38 dingers. He also posted career-high marks in RBI (112), runs scored (132), and wRC+ (128) in the process.

There wasn’t one particular month that stands out here but Bell was incredibly consistent. He never hit fewer than four homers or more than eight, and he never accumulated fewer than 16 RBI or more than 21.

After this outlier-type production, his wRC+ went on a precipitous decline prior to the end of his career. This number read as follows during his final four seasons: 97, 93, 41, and 49.

Troy Glaus: 37 Home Runs in 2005

Do you remember that Troy Glaus played for the DBacks? Well, I didn’t. After seven years with the Angels, he took his talents to the desert for one year and etched his name in the home run record books with 35 dingers. This was a few years removed from his playoff performance, which is among the most home runs in a postseason. The key for Glaus in most seasons was to stay healthy. As long as he did that, taters were mashed consistently.

Between 1999 and 2002, the sweet-swinging third baseman racked up three straight 30-homer, 100-RBI seasons, setting the Angels’ single-season home run record in 2000 with 47. In 2003 and 2004, he was limited to 91 and 58 games, respectively, before appearing in 149 for Arizona. He missed yet another 30-100 performance by three RBI but would reach those benchmarks one final time in 2006 with the Toronto Blue Jays by slugging 38 homers with 104 RBI.

His monthly OPS was a roller coaster that peaked at the end of the year, too. After posting a .965 mark in April, it went down to .865, .788, and .788 over the next three months before shooting back up to 1.010 and .905 in August and September, respectively. Glaus hit 16 of his 35 homers over the regular season’s final two months.

Paul Goldschmidt: 36 Home Runs in 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvYKq87Tk90&t

This was one of two times Paul Goldschmidt hit 36 home runs in a season for Arizona. This one was significant, though, because it was the first time and it put him on the map. Plus, he also led the National League in this category in 2013. He’s been a consistently elite performer over the years, but the 6.0 fWAR he posted is still the second-best mark of his career (his best is 7.2 in 2015).

Goldschmidt’s performance was quite even in a number of areas — for instance, he posted an identical .952 OPS in the first and second half of 2013. However, he proved to be crucial toward overall team success. Arizona posted an 81-81 record that year, and they typically won when Goldy was firing on all cylinders. Their first baseman had a 1.213 OPS and 28 homers in victories, compared to a .669 OPS and eight homers in losses.

Diamondbacks Home Run Leaders: The Rest

Here’s what the remainder of the top 23 most powerful seasons in Dbacks history looks like:

Paul Goldschmidt, 2017: 36 home runs
Christian Walker, 2022: 36
Matt Williams, 1999: 35
Steve Finley, 2000: 35
Eduardo Escobar, 2019: 35
Steve Finley, 1999: 34
Christian Walker, 2023: 33
Paul Goldschmidt, 2015 and 2018: 33
Ketel Marte, 2019: 32
Mark Reynolds, 2010: 32
Chris Young, 2007: 32
Justin Upton, 2011: 31
Luis Gonzalez, 2000: 31
Yasmany Tomas, 2016: 31
David Peralta, 2018: 30
Jake Lamb, 2017: 30
Jason Kubel, 2012: 30

To find the Dbacks seasons that fall outside of the top 23, check out the full list on FanGraphs.

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