Pandas Left Outer Join results in table larger than left table

You can expect this to increase if keys match more than one row in the other DataFrame:

In [11]: df = pd.DataFrame([[1, 3], [2, 4]], columns=['A', 'B'])

In [12]: df2 = pd.DataFrame([[1, 5], [1, 6]], columns=['A', 'C'])

In [13]: df.merge(df2, how='left')  # merges on columns A
Out[13]: 
   A  B   C
0  1  3   5
1  1  3   6
2  2  4 NaN

To avoid this behaviour drop the duplicates in df2:

In [21]: df2.drop_duplicates(subset=['A'])  # you can use take_last=True
Out[21]: 
   A  C
0  1  5

In [22]: df.merge(df2.drop_duplicates(subset=['A']), how='left')
Out[22]: 
   A  B   C
0  1  3   5
1  2  4 NaN