In their 56 seasons of baseball in Minnesota the Twins have had 71 different players don the tools of ignorance and squat down behind the plate to catch a major league pitcher. Two those 71 players only caught in one inning of one game. Cesar Tovar did it when owner Calvin Griffith had him play every position in a game in 1968 as a gimmick and manager Tom Kelly had Jeff Reboulet catch the ninth inning in a 1995 game against the Royals in the Metrodome. It wasn’t an easy inning for Reboulet either, as he caught two different pitchers as the Royals sent 12 men to the plate and scored 6 runs on 6 hits not to mention 2 walks and a wild pitch.
With the Minnesota 2017 TwinsFest going on I thought it would be a good time to rank the Twins catchers. The Twins have been looking for an everyday catcher ever since Joe Mauer hung up his catcher’s mitt after the 1993 season due to a variety of injuries the most serious of which were his concussion problems. Kurt Suzuki filled in since then but he too has moved on. The Twins Top 10 Catchers list ranks the catchers by B-R WAR statistics. Player must have appeared in at least 51% of his games as a catcher to qualify for this list.
| Rk | Player | WAR/pos | G | From | To | Age | AB | H | HR | RBI | SB | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Joe Mauer | 50.0 | 1590 | 2004 | 2016 | 21-33 | 5919 | 1826 | 130 | 804 | 50 | .308 | .837 |
| 2 | Butch Wynegar | 15.2 | 794 | 1976 | 1982 | 20-26 | 2746 | 697 | 37 | 325 | 8 | .254 | .682 |
| 3 | Earl Battey | 14.3 | 853 | 1961 | 1967 | 26-32 | 2762 | 768 | 76 | 350 | 8 | .278 | .765 |
| 4 | Brian Harper | 13.4 | 730 | 1988 | 1993 | 28-33 | 2503 | 767 | 48 | 346 | 7 | .306 | .773 |
| 5 | A.J. Pierzynski | 9.4 | 430 | 1998 | 2003 | 21-26 | 1428 | 430 | 26 | 193 | 6 | .301 | .788 |
| 6 | George Mitterwald | 6.0 | 514 | 1966 | 1973 | 21-28 | 1578 | 377 | 50 | 176 | 9 | .239 | .676 |
| 7 | Glenn Borgmann | 5.0 | 442 | 1972 | 1979 | 22-29 | 1207 | 277 | 14 | 137 | 4 | .229 | .630 |
| 8 | Tim Laudner | 3.2 | 734 | 1981 | 1989 | 23-31 | 2038 | 458 | 77 | 263 | 3 | .225 | .682 |
| 9 | Terry Steinbach | 3.1 | 347 | 1997 | 1999 | 35-37 | 1207 | 309 | 30 | 150 | 8 | .256 | .719 |
| 10 | Kurt Suzuki | 3.0 | 368 | 2014 | 2016 | 30-32 | 1230 | 323 | 16 | 160 | 0 | .263 | .680 |
Anybody on this list surprise you?
It’s surprising A.J. didn’t get higher on the list. Also surprised that Wynegar is #2, he’s obviously better than I remember.
AJ only played in Minnesota for six seasons and only the last three seasons were full time. Had he spent his entire career here he would be number 2 on the list with a WAR of 23.3 . He was a good player, I always enjoyed watching him play, the man will do most anything to win.
I might sneak Dave Engle in there. You can’t fault average to Zimmerman and Roof, both who held down the fort (as did Blanco the year Mauer was gone). Redmond and Prince were stud when they got the chance. Russ Nixon was great but hardly got into games. Man, the Twins have basically had around 64 catchers in their tenure…many one-year wonders.
Engle did not make the list because he did not play at least 51% of his games as a catcher.
Battey was better then Wyneger, both offensively and defensively. Harper has always been underrated. Lauder barely belongs on this list at all, he couldn’t hit and wasn’t all that special defensively. Somehow, I barely remember Borgman.