At 60 Homers With 4 Games Left, Judge’s AL Record 62 is Up Next For Cal Raleigh

If Cal Raleigh doesn’t hit another home run for the rest of 2025, he will still have produced one of the top-10 homer seasons in MLB history. On Wednesday, he picked up his 59th long ball of the year, tying him with Babe Ruth’s 1921 for the 10th-most ever, and then blasted his 60th later in the same game, moving him into a tie for ninth with Babe Ruth again, this time his legendary 1927.

In addition, Raleigh is the lone switch-hitter in the top 10 – the previous record for home runs by a switch-hitter was Mickey Mantle’s 54 in 1961 – which is otherwise made up of three left-handed batters and three righties (as well as a couple of repeat players). He’s also one more multi-homer game away from becoming the leader in those in a single season: Raleigh is currently tied with Hank Greenberg’s 1938, Sammy Sosa’s 1998 and Aaron Judge’s 2022 with 11 such games.

The records don’t have to stop there, though: there are four games left in the season for Raleigh and his Mariners, which means four more games for him to move further up the all-time, single-season home run rankings. While Barry Bonds’ 73 from 2001 is out of reach barring the greatest single-weekend performance in MLB’s history, there is still plenty for Raleigh to accomplish in what time remains in 2025.

Here are the top 10 single-season home run leaders, as of Sept. 25:

One more home run would tie Raleigh with Roger Maris for eighth all-time, and also the second-most in American League history. Two more home runs would tie him with Judge, the AL record holder, and current seventh-ranked player. A third homer in his remaining four games would give Raleigh sole possession of the AL record, as well as tie him with Sammy Sosa’s 1999 for the sixth-most in a single season.

Beyond that is maybe asking for a little too much, but it’s entirely possible that Raleigh hits four in his remaining four games, which would put his 2025 into a tie for the fifth-most ever, with Sosa’s 2001. 

Should Raleigh successfully pass Judge, it would not only mean the AL record is his, but also that it was no longer in possession of the Yankees. Before Ruth hit 59 home runs with New York in 1921, he mashed 54 of them for the Yankees in 1920. And before that, Ruth was on the Red Sox, where he went deep an MLB-leading 29 times in 1919. Those 29 home runs were also a new record, breaking Ned Williamson’s then-longstanding mark of 27 from 1884, with the National League’s Chicago White Stockings – now the Cubs. 

The Red Sox had the record until Ruth smashed it with the Yankees the very next season, and then Ruth broke it a couple more times in his career, culminating in 1927’s 60-homer campaign. That record then stood until Maris in 1961, and was broken as far as MLB goes by McGwire in ‘98 and then Bonds in ’01, but the AL-specific mark stood until Judge surpassed Maris in 2022, which kept at least the more local version the record in-house for the Yankees. 

Now, with just three more home runs, Raleigh can take not just the AL record from Judge, but from the organization that has had it attached to one of their players for over 100 years now. Raleigh will face the Rockies one last time on Thursday, then conclude his season over the weekend against the Dodgers.

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