Here's a weird thing I discovered recently as I thought to myself, "Hey, the Twins sure to seem to be hitting a lot of home runs this season."
While they don't have any one player cranking them out at a significant pace — Brian Dozier and Miguel Sano are tied for the team lead with 14, which doesn't even crack MLB's top 50 — as a team the Twins have 105 home runs through the first 88 games at the All-Star break. That's a full-season pace of 193 home runs.
That's not a ton when measured against the rest of baseball — it puts them just 14th this season. But it's a lot for them.
If the Twins finish the year with that many, it will be the most they've hit as a team since 1987 — the year they won their first World Series title, fielding a lineup in which Kirby Puckett, Gary Gaetti, Kent Hrbek and Tom Brunansky (the current Twins hitting coach) all hit at least 28 home runs.
This year's Twins have done it more by accumulation. Dozier and Sano have 14 apiece, while Eduardo Nunez and Byung Ho Park have 12 each. Four other players have at least six, one has five and two more have four. It adds up.
The Twins have done much of their damage on the road, clubbing 58 homers in 42 away games. But they still have more than a home run per game at home (47 in 46 games at Target Field).
They still have a ways to go, however, to match the club record of 225 set in 1963. Here, though, are their year-by-year home run totals from 1987 to 2016:
