Twins Home Run Leaders by Position

 

October 21, 2009 – I thought that it would be fun to take a look back over the Twins history just to see who the Twins leaders are in home runs at each position. Some of the numbers that I found from the Twins 49 seasons in Minnesota were really a surprise to me and I have followed the Twins since their inception in 1961.

POSITION	PLAYER	HOME RUNS	AT BATS PER HOME RUN
Catcher	Tim Laudner	77	26.46
1B	Kent Hrbek	293	21.13
2B	Rod Carew	46	96.74
SS	Zoilo Versalles	86	48.23
3B	Gary Gaetti	201	24.82
OF	Kirby Puckett	207	35.00
DH	Matt LeCroy	53	21.40
P	Jim Kaat	14	71.00

You have to be thinking, this can’t be right, where is Twins all-time home run slugger Harmon Killebrew? But when you look at the numbers you will see that Harmon played 14 seasons with the Twins but he split his time playing four positions, he played 881 games at 1B, 481 games at 3B, 455 games in the OF, and 122 games as a DH. Killebrew smashed 191 home runs as a first baseman, 142 as an outfielder, 129 while playing the hot corner, and 13 more when he was the DH. The Twins currently have some players on the roster like Justin Morneau, Jason Kubel, and Joe Mauer that could be slugging their way on to this list very soon.

When you look at the Washington Sentaors/Nationals numbers from 1901 to 1960 to get a franchise perspective you see how much different baseball is today from its earlier years. I think the one interesting number that jumped out at me here was Roy Sievers and the fact that he hit a home run in every 16.95 at bats when he played the outfield.It is always fun to look at historical numbers and to do comparisons.

POSITION	PLAYER	HOME RUNS	AT BATS PER HOME RUN
Catcher	Jake Early	29	68.76
1B	Mickey Vernon	121	57.27
2B	Buddy Myer	34	162.94
SS	Joe Cronin	51	70.24
3B	Eddie Yost	101	59.51
OF	Roy Sievers	159	16.95
DH	–	–	–
P	Walter Johnson	24	96.83