List of Major League Baseball annual home run leaders

In baseball, a home run is scored when the ball is hit so far that the batter is able to circle all the bases ending at home plate, scoring himself plus any runners already on base, with no errors by the defensive team on the play. An automatic home run is achieved by hitting the ball on the fly over the outfield fence in fair territory. More rarely, an inside-the-park home run occurs when the hitter reaches home plate while the baseball remains in play on the field. In Major League Baseball (MLB), a player in each league[L] wins the home run title each season by hitting the most home runs that year. Only home runs hit in a particular league count towards that league's seasonal lead. Mark McGwire, for example, hit 58 home runs in 1997, more than any other player that year. However, McGwire was traded from the American League's (AL) Oakland Athletics to the National League's (NL) St. Louis Cardinals midway through the season and his individual AL and NL home run totals (34 and 24, respectively) did not qualify to lead either league. The first home run champion in the National League was George Hall. In the league's inaugural 1876 season, Hall hit five home runs for the short-lived National League Philadelphia Athletics. In 1901, the American League was established and Hall of Fame second baseman Nap Lajoie led it with 14 home runs for the American League Philadelphia Athletics. Over the course of his 22-season career, Babe Ruth led the American League in home runs twelve times. Mike Schmidt and Ralph Kiner have the second and third most home run titles respectively, Schmidt with eight and Kiner with seven, all won in the National League. Kiner's seven consecutive titles from 1946 to 1952 are also the most consecutive home run titles by any player. Ruth set the Major League Baseball single-season home run record four times, first at 29 (1919), then 54 (1920), 59 (1921), and finally 60 (1927), all in the American League. Ruth's 1920 and 1921 seasons are tied for the widest margin of victory for a home run champion as he topped the next highest total by 35 home runs in each season. The single season mark of 60 stood for 34 years until Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in 1961 in the American League for which MLB assigned an asterisk until reversing themselves in 1991, citing Maris had accomplished his record in a longer season. Maris' league-wide record remained unbroken for 37 years until two National League players, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, both hit more than 62 home runs during the 1998 home run record chase, with McGwire ultimately setting the new record of 70, This record passed both Maris' American League record and the previous National League record, set 68 years earlier by Hack Wilson with 56 in 1930. Barry Bonds, who also has the most career home runs, then broke McGwire's record three years later, setting the existing single season record of 73 in 2001, again in the National League. The American League record was set in 2022 after being held by Roger Maris for 61 years, when Aaron Judge hit 62 homeruns. The 1998 and 2001 seasons each had four players hit 50 or more home runs – Greg Vaughn, Ken Griffey Jr., Sosa, and McGwire in 1998 and Alex Rodriguez, Luis Gonzalez, Sosa, and Bonds in 2001. A player has hit 50 or more home runs 42 times, 25 times since 1990. Only seven players have hit 60 or more in one season, with Aaron Judge (2022) and Cal Raleigh (2025) the most recent. The lowest home run total to lead a major league was four, recorded in the NL by Lip Pike in 1877 and Paul Hines in 1878.