Matthew Taylor: O's boasting more power than ever

We are currently witnessing the most powerful era in Orioles history. It is not only that this year's team is sending baseballs flying out of the ballpark in bunches before the temperature even heats up. Baltimore's power surge has run for five seasons now after a relative drought of home runs in the early 2000s. It is a period that rivals any stretch in team history.

The Orioles have had at least one player with 30 home runs in every decade of their post-St. Louis Browns existence. It has been done 36 times overall in Baltimore. Gus Triandos was the first to reach the mark with exactly 30 homers in 1958. He was the only batter to reach the mark in the '50s. It then happened eight times in the '60s, twice in the '70s, six times in the '80s, seven times in the '90s, and three times in the 2000s. Meanwhile, there have been nine 30-homer seasons in Baltimore since 2011, which is already more than any other decade in team history.

The O's have now had a player with 30 or more home runs for five consecutive seasons. That has happened only once before, from 1995 through 1999. The difference, however, is that two or more players have had 30+ home runs in four of the past five seasons: J.J. Hardy (30) and Mark Reynolds (37) in 2011, Adam Jones (32) and Chris Davis (33) in 2012, Jones (33) and Davis (53) again in 2013, and Manny Machado (35) and Davis (47) last season. Prior to 2011 two batters had 30 homers in the same season only four times total in franchise history: 1966, 1969, 1987, and 1996.

Not so long ago, any discussion of the Orioles and home runs would focus on ones they had given up. I wrote about the O's lack of long balls in a 2007 post titled, "A Power Outage in Charm City." At the time, it had been three years since any Orioles batter hit 30 home runs. That powerless streak would extend to four years before Aubrey Huff stroked 32 homers in 2008. Since then we've seen record-setting performances, and three entries have dropped out of the Orioles' Top 10 for single-season home runs. Players with fewer than 39 home runs need not apply.

That brings us to this year's powerful bunch. Headed into Thursday night's games, the Orioles trailed only the New York Mets for the most home runs in baseball and ranked third in the majors for slugging percentage. Meanwhile, they had back-to-back homers in three consecutive games this week, which had never happened before in Baltimore. Machado leads baseball in slugging percentage and OPS and joins Mark Trumbo among MLB's top 10 for homers.

For what it's worth, the Orioles have never had multiple players hit 40 home runs in the same season, nor have they had three players reach the 30-homer mark in the same season. The powerful 1996 club, which established the current team record of 257 home runs, came close to having two players with 40 homers - Brady Anderson had 50 and Palmeiro hit 39 - and had three additional batters within shouting distance of 30 home runs: Bobby Bonilla with 28, Cal Ripken with 26, and Chris Hoiles with 25.

In 2014 Sports Illustrated asked, "Where did MLB's power go?" The answer, it appears, is Baltimore.

Matthew Taylor blogs about the Orioles at Roar from 34. Follow him on Twitter: @RoarFrom34. His ruminations about the Birds appear as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our site. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.