Home Run Spikes?

It's always notable when a player jumps far above his career high for home runs. Unfortunately, steroids are often blamed when it happens today. Spikes in a player's seasonal home runs are not a new thing in baseball history. For example, in 1884, Ned Williamson hit 27 home runs after hitting a grand total of eight in six prior seasons. Of course, Williamson wasn't alone that year -- the 1884 Cubs hit 142 home runs a year after hitting thirteen. The reason for this oddity was a rule change making the left field fence only 180 feet away from home plate. Of course, unless players had Bill Veeck as an owner, this sort of thing didn't generally happen in the twentieth century. Regardless, home run spikes continued. Whether from a mundane one-year increase in playing time or from other sources, the following players had one season with a home run total way out of sync with the rest of their career.

First, I want to list the players who had at least twenty more home runs in their top HR season than in their second-highest HR season. Twenty is just an arbitrary number, but it's round and not too exclusionary.

20+ More Home Runs In Top HR Season Than In Any Other Season, 1901-2007

1. Brady Anderson
   Top Season: 50, 1996
   Second Highest Season: 24, 1999
   Difference: 26
   
   
2. Luis Gonzalez
   Top Season: 57, 2001
   Second Highest Season: 31, 2000
   Difference: 26
   
   
3. Davey Johnson
   Top Season: 43, 1973
   Second Highest Season: 18, 1971
   Difference: 25
   
   
4. Barry Bonds
   Top Season: 73, 2001
   Second Highest Season: 49, 2000
   Difference: 24
   
   
5. Roger Maris
   Top Season: 61, 1961
   Second Highest Season: 39, 1960
   Difference: 22
   
   
6. Adrian Beltre
   Top Season: 48, 2004
   Second Highest Season: 26, 2007
   Difference: 22
   
   
7. Hit Career High in 2007
   Prince Fielder
   Chris Young
   Jack Cust
   Josh Fields
   Troy Tulowitzki
   B.J. Upton
   Ryan Garko

Presumably, all of the players who hit a career high in 2007 will get within twenty home runs of that number again (Cust is the least likely, I guess, but he only needs seven homers).

Here's a table of all players (with a career high of over 20 HR, there's that number again) who had a home run season at least twice that of each of the rest of their seasons. No player before 1930 managed to pull it off, but that's not really a surprise given the paucity of homers in the deadball era.

Name	Highest HR Total	2nd Highest	Difference	Year
Ed Morgan	26	11	15	1930
Wally Moses	25	9	16	1937
Tommy Holmes	28	13	15	1945
Chuck Workman	25	11	14	1945
Willard Marshall	36	17	19	1947
Roy Smalley	21	8	13	1950
Harry Simpson	21	10	11	1956
George Crowe	31	15	16	1957
Lee Walls	24	11	13	1958
Ken Hunt	25	6	19	1961
Earl Averill	21	10	11	1961
Chico Fernandez	20	6	14	1962
Roman Mejias	24	11	13	1962
Sam Bowens	22	7	15	1964
Walt Bond	20	7	13	1964
Bert Campaneris	22	8	14	1970
Dave Roberts	21	10	11	1973
Joe Charboneau	23	4	19	1980
Wade Boggs	24	11	13	1987
Dale Sveum	25	12	13	1987
Lonnie Smith	21	9	12	1989
Rick Wilkins	30	14	16	1993
Orestes Destrade	20	5	15	1993
Terry Steinbach	35	16	19	1996
Wes Helms	23	10	13	2003
Bobby Crosby	22	9	13	2004
Felipe Lopez	23	11	12	2005
Bill Hall	35	17	18	2006

Career High in 2007
Prince Fielder
Chris Young
Jack Cust
Josh Fields
Troy Tulowitzki
B.J. Upton
Ryan Garko

Some of the players on this list had a lack of playing time in many seasons contributing to their appearance here. For example, Orestes Destrade had 637 plate appearances in the season he hit 20 home runs but never had above 152 PA in any other season. Here are the players from the list who, in my mind, had playing time issues contributing to their season home run total spike (I linked to their Baseball-Reference.com page so you can judge for yourself):

Roy Smalley
Harry Simpson
George Crowe
Ken Hunt
Roman Mejias
Walt Bond
Sam Bowens
Dave Roberts (not the active player)
Joe Charboneau
Rick Wilkins
Orestes Destrade
Wes Helms

Obviously, some of the players towards the bottom can potentially be bumped off the list. Note: I tried to find all of the players who made themselves eligible for the big list in 2007 for the short list at the end, but it's entirely possible I missed someone.