Baseball Home Run Thoughts, in no particular order

1. Currently, Sammy Sosa is tied with Mark McGwire for #6 on the all-time home run chart, at 583, and 3 behind Frank Robinson's 586.
2. Sosa's home runs per season since 2001: 64, 49, 40, 35, 9*. (The 9 is in less than half a season.)
3. At the start of the 2005 season, Alex Rodriguez was tied with Albert Belle for 50th place all-time (381). In less than half a season, ARod has passed Andres Galarraga for 39th place and now has 401.
4. Jim Thome has "only" 7 home runs so far this season (which is exactly 7 more than I'll hit in my major league career), giving him 430 for his career, #34 all time. In his years with Cleveland, he had OPS totals over 1.000 four times, and was at .998 once. For the Phillies, he has had very good, but not great, OPS numbers of .958 & .977 (and this season he's down at .712 and on the DL). When he went to the Phillies, I was disappointed, but guessed that his best seasons may have been with the Indians. Whether he'll snap back to his old self or not remains to be seen, but I'll stand by my earlier prediction.
5. In the early 90's, we thought that Juan Gonzalez would put up some nifty career home run totals. After all, he hit 27 at age 21, 43 @ 22, and 46 @ 23, back in the days before McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds were smacking 60+. Now at age 35, he can't make it to first base. (At least he was born on October 20.) Not that his 434 career homers (#32 after 2004) are anything to sneeze at, but it shows the difficulties of projecting young players to have exceedingly high career numbers.