Gimme Four

A little something about every player his four homers in a game

Seventeen times in baseball’s modern era, a player has hit four homers in a game.

Eugenio Suarez was welcomed into the “Four Homers in a Game” club on Saturday when the Arizona star went deep, deep, deep, deep, against the Braves. Suarez, at 33 years, 282 days, became the 19th and oldest member of the club, which is more exclusive than SNL’s Five-Timers Club (five or more times hosting), which has 28 members.

Here’s a mention of every player who has hit four homers in a game.

Suárez became just the third player in MLB history to hit four in a losing cause, joining Bob Horner, whose Braves lost to the Montreal Expos, and in the 19th century, Ed Delahanty in a Philadelphia Phillies loss. Slowly, I turned - Delanty died when he was swept over Niagara Falls. Reports are varied as to whether he fell or jumped.

The Diamondbacks are streaking (okay, that’s a stretch, particularly since two in a row is not a streak), with the last four-homer game coming from the Dbacks’ J.D. Martinez at Dodger Stadium in 2017. Martinez became only the third player (since 1913) to hit four home runs off four different pitchers in one game. Torey Lovullo was the Arizona manager for both Eugenio and J.D.’s games, and now is the only manager in MLB history to manage two four-homer games.

Suarez played in the game when his teammate in Cincinnati, Scooter Gennett, hit four homers against the Cardinals on June 6, 2017. Baseball is still investigating how a guy named “Scooter” could hit four homers in a game. Three times in his career, he hit two homers in a game for a total of four career multi-homer games. Gennett finished his career with only 87 homers. Scooter had 10 RBI in his game. Only Mark Whiten had more ribbies in a four-homer game; he had 12.

What I love about Josh Hamilton’s four homers was that each was a two-run homer. His 18 total bases ties him with Joe Adcock for the second most TB in a game. Only Shawn Green had more (19). Each of those three hit four homers and a double in a game, but Green also had a single in his 6-6 game. Green entered this game with just five homers.