Strikeouts are up all across baseball the last few years so I thought it would be fun to see who the Minnesota Twins “King of the Whiff” is from 2000-2015. No real shockers on this list but I was a bit surprised to see Joe Mauer so high on the list even though he once had a reputation as a tough guy to strike out.
If you go all the way back to the Twins start in 1961 you will see that Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew holds the Twins all-time strike out title with 1,314 whiffs and that equates to striking out once in every 6.10 plate appearances. However, the recently retired Hunter struck out once every 5.60 plate appearances if you look at his entire Twins career. At the rate Joe Mauer is striking out, he could replace Hunter as the 2000 to current Twins King of the Whiff this season.
| Rk | Player | SO | G | PA | R | H | HR | RBI | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Torii Hunter | 897 | 1231 | 5020 | 687 | 1241 | 205 | 755 | .269 | .792 |
| 2 | Justin Morneau | 839 | 1278 | 5350 | 669 | 1318 | 221 | 860 | .278 | .832 |
| 3 | Michael Cuddyer | 805 | 1139 | 4555 | 606 | 1106 | 141 | 580 | .272 | .794 |
| 4 | Joe Mauer | 772 | 1456 | 6244 | 817 | 1697 | 119 | 755 | .313 | .845 |
| 5 | Jacque Jones | 674 | 881 | 3439 | 438 | 881 | 123 | 432 | .278 | .781 |
| 6 | Jason Kubel | 591 | 798 | 3022 | 346 | 729 | 105 | 442 | .269 | .783 |
| 7 | Corey Koskie | 565 | 688 | 2834 | 394 | 671 | 89 | 377 | .278 | .838 |
| 8 | Trevor Plouffe | 522 | 639 | 2565 | 297 | 568 | 84 | 310 | .245 | .728 |
| 9 | Brian Dozier | 455 | 544 | 2374 | 318 | 503 | 75 | 247 | .240 | .726 |
| 10 | Nick Punto | 440 | 747 | 2707 | 311 | 587 | 12 | 194 | .248 | .648 |
During this same time period Adam Dunn went down swinging a total of 2,379 times or once every 3.50 PA’s. That’s 2,379 KO’s and 1,631 hits on the resume.