Major League Baseball Records for Sacrifice Flies

Most of the all-time single season records in Major League Baseball are dominated by present or future Hall of Fame players, but that is not the case with sacrifice flies. Of the top twelve players with the most sacrifice flies in a single major league season, only one is currently in the Hall of Fame, and just one is active as of this writing. The Hall does however rule when it comes to the career sacrifice fly list, as the top five are all enshrined, led by switch-hitting slugger Eddie Murray's total of 128.

Incredibly, the most Murray ever hit in one season was just ten, a figure he reached only once. The single season record for the highest number of sacrifice flies, fly balls that a runner tags up on and then scores, is held by Gil Hodges, who accomplished the feat with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1954 when he had 19. Hodges did this the very first year that sacrifice flies were kept track of, and then had ten the next year. His mark has been approached but never equaled or surpassed. Andre Dawson of the Montreal Expos had 18 sac flies in 1983, but couldn't quite eclipse Hodges' total. Bobby Bonilla with the Orioles and the New York Yankees' Roy White both share third place with 17, Bonilla in 1996 and White in 1971.

Mark Loretta, now with the Astros, is knotted with Juan Gonzalez at 16; Loretta did it with the Padres in 2004, while Juan hit 16 in 2001 in his only season in Cleveland. Loretta isn't the only active player in the top twelve, as the Tigers' Magglio Ordonez had 15 in 2000 while a member of the Chicago White Sox. That puts him in the company of Howard Johnson, Gary Carter, Bonilla once more, Don Mattingly, and Albert Belle; they all hit 15 sacrifice flies in one campaign.

Murray's 128 was one better than the 127 that Cal Ripken Jr put into the books in his Hall of Fame career that ended in 2001. Right behind Cal is the 123 sacrifice flies hit by the Brewers' Robin Yount, and the 121 by Hank Aaron, who played for 23 seasons. George Brett rounds out this parade of Hall of Famers with 120, a sum that he reached with the Royals. Ruben Sierra, who also put in twenty years, wound up in a flat-footed tie with Brett. Rafael Palmeiro, Rusty Staub, and Frank Thomas are next with 119, with only Thomas still at it, the leading run producer this year for the Blue Jays. Thomas is 39 years old, but still knocking in runs, and he needs just nine sacrifice flies to catch up with Murray. However, he hasn't hit as many as ten in one calendar year in the last five years, but that doesn't mean he cannot get the job done.

If Thomas falls short, the next best bet would be the Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez. He now stands at 73, but is just 31 years old and if he were to keep attaining his average of 6 sacrifice flies a year, he would have the required 55 to tie Murray in about nine seasons. The Tigers' Gary Sheffield has the only other realistic shot among today's batters to overtake Murray, but he is still 21 short at the age of 38 and loses long stretches of each season it seems with injuries.

The standard for the most sacrifice flies in one contest is three, held by nine different players with only Ernie Banks a member of baseball's elite class of Hall of Fame talent among them. The Oakland Athletics of 1984 hold the major league mark of most sac flies by one team in an entire season with 77. The Mariners and Rockies share the record for the most in one game, as they each lifted five fly balls that scored runners in one tilt, Seattle in 1988 and Colorado in 2006.