Two-homer day brings Chris Davis to 30 — and select company

Chris Davis continued his incredible power hitting with two tape-measure blasts against the Yankees on Saturday night. [AP] Orioles homered twice Tigers Miguel

Chris Davis continued his incredible power hitting with two tape-measure blasts against the Yankees on Saturday night. [AP]

Orioles

homered twice

Tigers

Miguel Cabrera

According to the Elias Bureau, Davis is the fifth-fastest player to reach 30 homers, doing so in 82 team games. He's also the 34th player to reach 30 homers by the All-Star break, a milepost which in years past put a player within range of challenging Roger Maris' single-season home run record of 61. Juiced sluggers and juiced baseballs changed how we view such quick accumulations of home runs, but it's still worth pointing out.

Given that the Orioles still have 14 games to play before the All-Star break, he figures to climb higher on this list, particularly given that his longest streak of the season without a homer is eight games:

Rk	Player	Year	G	1st Half HR	2nd Half HR	Total HR
1	Barry Bonds	2001	81	39	34	73
2T	Reggie Jackson	1969	91	37	10	47
	Mark McGwire	1998	80	37	33	70
4T	Ken Griffey	1998	88	35	21	56
	Luis Gonzalez	2001	87	35	22	57
6	Frank Howard	1969	100	34	14	48
7T	Roger Maris	1961	83	33	28	61
	Mark McGwire	1987	80	33	16	49
	Matt Williams	1994	86	33	10	43
	Ken Griffey	1994	87	33	7	40
	Sammy Sosa	1998	83	33	33	66
12T	Frank Thomas	1994	86	32	6	38
	Sammy Sosa	1999	85	32	31	63
	Albert Pujols	2009	90	32	15	47
15T	Willie Mays	1954	84	31	10	41
	Mike Schmidt	1979	92	31	14	45
	Kevin Mitchell	1989	86	31	16	47
	Mark McGwire	1997	87	31	27	58
	Jose Canseco	1999	82	31	3	34
	David Ortiz	2006	86	31	23	54
	Jose Bautista	2011	84	31	12	43
22T	Harmon Killebrew	1964	76	30	19	49
	Willie McCovey	1969	86	30	15	45
	Willie Stargell	1971	76	30	18	48
	Willie Stargell	1973	86	30	14	44
	Dave Kingman	1976	86	30	7	37
	Brady Anderson	1996	79	30	20	50
	Ken Griffey	1997	84	30	26	56
	Greg Vaughn	1998	87	30	20	50
	Mark McGwire	2000	70	30	2	32
	Barry Bonds	2003	80	30	15	45
	Jim Thome	2006	82	30	12	42
	Alex Rodriguez	2007	85	30	24	54
	Chris Davis	2013	81	30	--	30

As you can see from the table above, not everybody who reached 30 made a serious charge on the record. Mays, the first player to reach 30 by the All-Star break, did so back when Babe Ruth held the record with 60; he was at 31 by the break, but hit just 10 the rest of the way even as he earned NL MVP honors and helped the Giants bring home a world championship. Maris himself reached 33 by the break and successfully toppled Ruth.

Just about every challenger who came along between 1962 and 1998 fell off considerably in the second half. Reggie Jackson's drop was perhaps the most dramatic given that he set a first-half record (it's worth noting that the All-Star Game was played fairly late that year, on July 23), and he had 91 games under his belt (Frank Howard had 100 that year!). When Dave Kingman fell off into the single digits in the second half in 1976, he did so while missing more than five weeks after tearing ligaments in his thumb. Likewise for Jose Canseco (1999) and Mark McGwire (2000), though by that point, the latter had surpassed Maris, albeit with a little pharmaceutical help. Frank Thomas, Ken Griffey and Matt Williams, meanwhile, fell off as their bids for the record ended due to the 1994 players' strike in early August.

The bottom line is that history shows how incredibly difficult it is to maintain the kind of pace Davis is setting. He's not going to get anywhere close to Barry Bonds' 73, but at the very least, he's putting himself in position to become the first player since Jose Bautista in 2010 to top 50 homers, and making a serious case for AL MVP, even as Cabrera continues to post incredible numbers himself. Revising my chart from a couple weeks ago:

Player	PA	H	HR	RBI	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS+	WAR
Davis	338	98	30	79	.333	.408	.724	195	4.0
Cabrera	365	117	24	81	.375	.463	.676	203	4.8

Manny Machado