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The Minnesota Twins are so easily dismissed as irrelevant, a franchise with the worst record in baseball in search of both a new general manager and a new direction. And here comes Brian Dozier for a bit of ridiculous relevancy, if you're willing to bend your mind around some numbers that make no sense at all.

Minnesota's second baseman homered again Tuesday night. That followed Monday's three-homer game against Kansas City. So what we have here is a September full of possibility — and, quite likely, some sort of history.

Dozier now has 25 home runs since the all-star break. Going back to 1913 — as far back as baseball-reference.com's Play Index tracks — there have now been 80 such instances that a player has homered 25 times in the second half. Dozier would appear to be the most unlikely of them all.

Where to start on this dive into nerdy numbers?

Let's condense it for a bit. Since 1990 — the year Dozier turned 3 — 27 different players have homered 25 times or more in the second half a total of 40 times. This includes a slew of instances during the height of the sport's steroid era from the likely suspects (Mark McGwire three times; Sammy Sosa and Alex Rodriguez four times apiece; Barry Bonds twice). Nine of those players have amassed at least 530 homers in their careers, placing them in the top 20 all-time.

Dozier entered this season with 75 total major league homers — or two more than Barry Bonds hit in his record-setting 2001 season, when he launched 34 after the all-star break. So what we're seeing here is a nearly unprecedented outburst of power from an unexpected source.

We say "nearly" for one reason: Rich Aurilia.

In 2001, Aurilia played on that same Giants team that boasted Bonds, the all-time home run king. Aurilia entered that year as an established, 29-year-old major league shortstop, a .270 hitter — albeit one with 65 major league homers. He hit 12 homers in the first half, not terribly alarming since he had hit 22 and 20 homers in the previous two seasons.

But hitting second in a Giants lineup that featured Bonds in the three hole, Aurilia went on a binge after the break, cranking 25 homers — exceeding his old, season-long best in just 72 games. Even going back to the minors, Aurilia hadn't hinted at such power. In his minor league career to that point, he had 32 total homers — or one every 51.5 at-bats.

This is now Dozier's territory, though his rampage might be more implausible. In his four college seasons at Southern Mississippi, Dozier totaled 16 homers — or one every 54 at-bats. In his four minor league seasons before being called up to the Twins, he totaled 16 homers, or one every 87.8 at-bats. He found something of a power stroke as a big leaguer, including hitting 28 homers last year, when he became an all-star. Still, his rate was once every 28 at-bats — just fine for a second baseman, but not generating highlight packages.

After Dozier crushed a leadoff homer off Kansas City's Dillon Gee on Tuesday night, his only hit in four at-bats, he had reached 25 homers in 215 at-bats after the all-star break. That would be one every 8.6 at-bats, or more than 10 times better than his minor league rate.

While we're diving down this rabbit hole, let's look at Dozier's overall second half, in which he entered play Tuesday with a 1.135 on-base-plus-slugging percentage. Again, dating back more than a century to 1913, there have been just 65 times in which a player has posted a higher OPS — and by just 35 players. The list, again, is mostly predictable — Babe Ruth nine times; Ted Williams, Rogers Hornsby, Jimmie Foxx and Lou Gehrig four times apiece; etc. Even the random names — Mike Napoli, Jim Edmonds, Ken Caminiti — are plausible.

Dozier just doesn't seem to fit. And he has 23 games to play. Which means it's not ridiculous to think he could creep into an even more exclusive club: those who have hit 30 homers in the second half of a season.

A dozen guys have done this (Sosa three times; McGwire, Ralph Kiner and Albert Belle twice). The most recent: Toronto's Jose Bautista in 2010. Ruth did it in 1927, Harmon Killebrew in 1962, and Hack Wilson in 1930.

Indeed, the only players to hit 30 homers in the second half of a season who aren't in the Hall of Fame are McGwire, Belle, Sosa and Bonds — and we won't get into the reasons for most of those exclusions — along with Ryan Howard and Bautista, who are still active.

Dozier has three-and-a-half weeks to join that group. Twins fans ought to dive into those numbers. Nerding out over one weird performance can somehow salvage a lost summer.