Today, Chicago White Sox SS Colson Montgomery set the AL single season strikeout record with his 223rd strikeout. This dubious honor was previously held by none other than the great Adam Dunn, who struck out 222 times in 2012. 223 also matches the MLB record, set by Mark Reynolds in 2009. Montgomery does have fewer plate appearances than both of those guys did in their historic seasons, so if we were to compare these three seasons by rate basis, he'd already be the king. And the season isn't even over yet!

I know the title says HR and OPS, but let's talk strikeouts as a quick warm up. The table below shows the top 10 strikeout seasons of all time. It should be a surprise to no one that all of these seasons came in the 2000s, but is kind of surprising that 40% of the seasons on this list came from guys who play or played shortstop. I was expecting all DH, 1B, and the big corner outfielder types.

While Montgomery is a quality player on an intriguing White Sox ball club, this is likely not the step the South Side brass expected after he put up 21 HR and an .804 OPS over his first 71 big league games. Whenever a player clubs 10 more home runs than he did in the previous year, we would generally expect to see a large jump in OPS as well. In Montgomery's case, his OPS has fallen below .700. 

After his production as a rookie last year, Montgomery was probably seen as one of the biggest threats in the White Sox offense for 2026 , so it would make sense that teams would come back in year two with a more concrete game plan to get him out. The sophomore slump happens to players all the time for a reason.

The point of this article isn't to dunk on this talented young infielder by any means, but instead to highlight a highly irregular type of season in baseball history; a year where a player has an OPS below .700, but 30 or more homers.

Yep, it has only happened 3 times in major league baseball history, with two/thirds of those instances occurring within the last decade. I'm not sure they cared too much about OPS in 1986, but I'd imagine most people thought this sort of thing would never happen again. Now, by comparison, it's downright common (once in over hundred years, and then twice in 9 years). These sort of rare-things-becoming-not-so-rare really helps support the notion of how power-heavy the game has gotten - getting hits has never been harder, so teams have to find ways to make their good hits count, and they're willing to sacrifice a lot of conventional baseball thought in order to do so. 

Before we move on, it's worth mentioning that even though he hit 35 home runs, 1986 was actually Dave Kingman's last season in the big leagues. If he had put up this same line in 2026, I'd be you he'd have at least 10 offers on the table, despite being 37 years old. Back in 1986, front offices didn't seem to want to trade the Sky King's high HR totals for all the flaws that went along with them. Now, that kind of player evaluation is the name of the game.

Now, let's open the field a bit more, to all players with an OPS below .700 and 25+ homers.

Still pretty rare, but not as rare. It has happened eight times in MLB, with a heavy emphasis on 21st century baseball. The first three happened roughly 20 years apart, and then when 2010 hit, it just started happening every few years. Six, or 75% of these occurrences, happened after Y2K. That's not as drastic as the 30 HR guys, but it still shows the same patterns. 

Speaking of patterns, when I look at this data, the main thing I can take away from this is these players all tend to have low batting averages, low on-base percentages, and relatively low slugging percentages, given their HR totals. Putting that together, they simply didn't make contact with the ball enough to record the doubles they needed to boost their slugging percentage, while providing very little at the plate in regards to free passes. Interestingly, many all-stars such as Max Muncy and the aforementioned Adam Dunn record high home run totals with low averages, but also put up massive OBP numbers to go along with them. We saw the rise of the three true outcome player in the early 2000s - will we see the rise of the two true outcome player in 2027 and beyond?