The 40-40 Club in MLB (Every Member)

Only six players in MLB history have joined the 40-40 club by hitting 40 home runs and stealing 40 bases in the same season. Jose Canseco started it in 1988, and Shohei Ohtani blew past it in 2024 with the first 50-50 season the sport had ever seen.

The 40-40 club is one of baseball’s rarest achievements because it demands two skills that rarely live in the same player at an elite level: the power to hit 40 home runs and the speed to steal 40 bases across a full season. Here is the complete list, the standout performances, and why it is so much harder than hitting 40 homers alone. Figures are through the 2024 season.

Every member of the 40-40 club

The table lists all six members, with their home run and stolen base totals in the qualifying season.

Player	Year	Team	Home runs	Stolen bases
Jose Canseco	1988	Oakland Athletics	42	40
Barry Bonds	1996	San Francisco Giants	42	40
Alex Rodriguez	1998	Seattle Mariners	42	46
Alfonso Soriano	2006	Washington Nationals	46	41
Ronald Acuna Jr.	2023	Atlanta Braves	41	73
Shohei Ohtani	2024	Los Angeles Dodgers	54	59

Six players in more than a century of baseball, spread across four decades, is what makes the club so exclusive. Two of the six arrived in back-to-back years, in 2023 and 2024, after a 17-year gap.

The first member: Jose Canseco

Canseco created the 40-40 club in 1988, hitting 42 home runs and stealing 40 bases for the Oakland Athletics on his way to the American League MVP. The combination was so novel that the term “40-40” was coined for him, and it stood alone for eight years. His season proved a slugger could also be a genuine base-stealing threat, a template later members would follow.

For most of the next two decades the club grew slowly. Barry Bonds matched the mark in 1996, Alex Rodriguez in 1998 as a 22-year-old shortstop, and Alfonso Soriano in 2006, each pairing 40-plus homers with 40-plus steals in a single year.

Acuna’s 40-70 and Ohtani’s 50-50

The two most recent members did not just join the club; they redefined its ceiling. Ronald Acuna Jr. produced the first 40-70 season in history in 2023, hitting 41 home runs and stealing 73 bases for Atlanta, winning the National League MVP. His stolen-base total is the highest any 40-40 member has posted, a reminder that he entered the club on the speed side as much as the power side.

Then Shohei Ohtani went further. In 2024, his first season with the Dodgers, he hit 54 home runs and stole 59 bases, the first 50-50 season baseball had ever seen. He cleared the 40-40 bar in both categories with room to spare, turning the club’s threshold into a footnote of his year.

How rare is the power-speed combination

The 40-40 club is hard because power and speed usually trade off. Big power hitters tend to be slower and are protected on the bases; fast players often lack the strength for 40 home runs. Finding both in one healthy, everyday player over 150-plus games is the exception, which is why only six have done it.

Its more common cousin is the 30-30 club, 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases, which has dozens of members and happens most seasons. Dropping both thresholds by ten changes the difficulty entirely: many players reach 30-30, but the jump to 40-40 has eliminated all but six. Recent rule changes that encouraged base-stealing helped Acuna and Ohtani, which may be why the club finally grew again after a long drought.

Who could join next

The base-running environment of the modern game gives fast sluggers a better chance than they had a decade ago, so the next member may not be far off. Any player who can pair 40 home runs with the green light to run is a candidate, and the recent additions suggest the club could expand more quickly than its history implies.

For more single-season milestones, see our leaderboards on most home runs in a season and the pitchers who try to stop these hitters on most Cy Young awards. Six members in over a century is what makes the 40-40 club worth chasing, and Shohei Ohtani just showed how far past it a great season can go.