Marlins' Stanton crushes 20th dinger of season to join elite group

At this point, the fact that Giancarlo Stanton can hit a baseball a long way is no secret to baseball fans. Stanton smashed his 20th home run of 2017 off Chicago Cubs reliever Pedro Strop on Sunday.

Behold:

It being June, Stanton crushing his 20th dinger seemed an inevitability. Doing so, however, places his name next to some legends. He has become the 11th player in the last 100 years to hit 20 home runs in each of his first eight seasons.

He joins Bob Johnson, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Ralph Kiner, Frank Robinson, Eddie Murray, Darryl Strawberry, Albert Pujols, and Mark Teixeira as the only ones to lay stakes to this claim. That's a list of six Hall of Famers, and at least one other who will likely be voted in somewhere down the line.

One name missing from that list is Atlanta Braves great Chipper Jones who hit 20 or more homers in 14 consecutive seasons starting in 1995. The problem is he made a grand total of four plate appearances in 1993, technically disqualifying him from this distinguished group.

Injuries have prevented Stanton from loftier totals, but barring any setbacks, he seems poised to reach the 30-home-run plateau for the fourth time in his career.