# How many homeruns are hit in an average MLB season?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-homeruns-are-hit-in-an-average-mlb-season/532082>\
**Category:** The Game Room\
**Created:** [March 11, 2010, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-homeruns-are-hit-in-an-average-mlb-season/532082 "2010-03-11T04:58:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-homeruns-are-hit-in-an-average-mlb-season/532082/1 "2010-03-11T04:58:21Z")

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

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**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-homeruns-are-hit-in-an-average-mlb-season/532082/2 "2010-03-11T05:21:58Z")

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Looks to be about 5000 or so.

I went over to [baseball-reference.com](http://baseball-reference.com), and looked at the annual summaries (2009 summary page: [2009 Major League Baseball Team Statistics | Baseball-Reference.com](http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2009.shtml) ).

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

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**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-homeruns-are-hit-in-an-average-mlb-season/532082/3 "2010-03-11T05:26:08Z")

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Thanks!

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**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2010, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-homeruns-are-hit-in-an-average-mlb-season/532082/4 "2010-03-11T16:33:57Z")

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Here’s the year-by-year page:

> **[Major League Batting Year-by-Year Averages | Baseball-Reference.com](https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/bat.shtml)**
>
> Major League Batting Year-by-Year Averages, Batting Totals and more on Baseball-Reference.com

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