How many homeruns are hit in an average MLB season?

The Game Room
1

Just wondering. Seems like it would be an interesting thing to know.

2

Looks to be about 5000 or so.

I went over to baseball-reference.com, and looked at the annual summaries (2009 summary page: 2009 Major League Baseball Team Statistics | Baseball-Reference.com ).

I expected to see a big dropoff over the past few years, with the crackdown on PEDs, but that doesn’t seem to necessarily be the case. The number of homers last year (5042) is nearly identical to 2005 and 2002. That said, the average over the past three seasons is several hundred HRs lower than the average over the prior 7:

2009: 5042
2008: 4878
2007: 4957
2006: 5386
2005: 5017
2004: 5451
2003: 5207
2002: 5059
2001: 5458
2000: 5693

3

Thanks!

4

Here’s the year-by-year page:

It gives HRs per game, not a total per season.