The American League has a new home run leader, and it shouldn’t be a surprise who it is.
With two homers in Monday night’s win over the Rangers, Shohei Ohtani brought his total on the season to 20, one ahead of Aaron Judge’s 19. He’s still two homers shy of Pete Alonso’s major league lead, but with Alonso on the injured list after being hit on the wrist by a pitch, Ohtani could soon overtake him.
Ohtani’s two dingers on Monday weren’t cheap ones, either. The first one came on a good low, inside pitch from Grant Anderson that Ohtani absolutely demolished. He somehow crushed it 459 feet to left-center with an exit velocity of 114.1 mph. He put an exclamation mark on it with a nice bat flip, too.
