They knocked in 100 and scored 100

HOF “Goose” Goslin

Every good baseball team needs those big bopper’s that that can knock in the ducks off the pond and it is even better, when he too, can also score a lot of runs. Those kind of hitters don’t come around too often but the Minnesota Twins/Washington Senators franchise has been blessed with 13 of those types of players and they have accomplished this feat a total of 18 times since 1901.

Hitters like this aren’t always power hitters and they aren’t always high average hitters either. Hitters on the list below have hit as many home runs as 49 by Harmon Killebrew or as few as 5 by Buddy Meyer. Some hit for very high averages like Rod Carew‘s .388 or as low as Bob Allison‘s .266 (which in today’s game wouldn’t be considered low at all.) Six of the 13 are MLB Hall of Fame players.

The first player in franchise history to turn this trick was outfielder Goose Goslin who who actually did it three years in a row from 1924-1926. The Senators won the World Series in 1924 and lost the World Series in 1925. If you want to learn more this Hall of Fame player take a few minutes and stop by here.

Harmon Killebrew

Six Minnesota Twins players have accomplished this rare feat over the years with Bob Allison being the first in 1962 and Michael Cuddyer being the most current player to it it back in 2006. Killebrew and Kirby Puckett are the only two Twins to do it twice.

The MLB career leader’s in this feat are Lou Gehrig with 13, Alex Rodriguez and Babe Ruth with 12, Barry Bonds and Jimmie Foxx with 11 and Henry Aaron with 10.

Franchise players with 100 runs and 100 RBI in a season

Twins retire Washington Senators ‘W’

The Twins retired the Washington Senators' "W" during a pregame ceremony honoring the Senators' 1924 World Series championship ahead of their series finale against the Cleveland Guardians on Sunday, Aug. 11, 2024, at Target Field in Minneapolis. / Nolan O'Hara / Bring Me The News
The Twins retired the Washington Senators’ “W” during a pregame ceremony honoring the Senators’ 1924 World Series championship ahead of their series finale against the Cleveland Guardians on Sunday, Aug. 11, 2024, at Target Field in Minneapolis. / Nolan O’Hara / Bring Me The News

The Twins retired the Washington Senators’ “W” during a pregame ceremony honoring the 100th anniversary of the 1924 World Series Senators team ahead of Sunday afternoon’s series finale against the Cleveland Guardians at Target Field in Minneapolis.

Here is what Wikipedia has about the Washington Senators 1924 World Series.

In 1924, Griffith named 27-year-old second baseman Bucky Harris player-manager. Led by the hitting of Goose Goslin and Sam Rice, and a solid pitching staff headlined by the 36-year-old Johnson, the Senators captured their first American League pennant, two games ahead of Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees.

The Senators faced John McGraw’s heavily favored New York Giants in the 1924 World Series. Despite Johnson losing both of his starts, the Senators kept pace to tie the Series at three games apiece and force Game 7. The Senators trailed the Giants 3–1 in the eighth inning of Game 7, when Bucky Harris hit a routine ground ball to third which hit a pebble and took a bad hop over Giants third baseman Freddie Lindstrom. Two runners scored on the play, tying the score at three. In the ninth inning with the game tied, 3–3, Harris brought in an aging Johnson to pitch on just one day of rest – he had been the losing pitcher in Game 5. Johnson held the Giants scoreless into extra innings. In the bottom of the 12th inning, Muddy Ruel hit a high foul ball near home plate. The Giants’ catcher, Hank Gowdy, dropped his protective face mask to field the ball but, failing to toss the mask aside, stumbled over it and dropped the ball, thus giving Ruel another chance to bat. On the next pitch, Ruel hit a double and, then proceeded to score the winning run when Earl McNeely hit a ground ball that took another bad hop over Lindstrom’s head. It was the only World Series triumph for the franchise during their 60-year tenure in Washington.

The “W” is the 10th number — or letter — retired by the Twins, joining Harmon Killebrew (No. 3), Rod Carew (No. 29), Tony Oliva (No. 6), Kent Hrbek (No. 14), Kirby Puckett (No. 34), Bert Blyleven (No. 28), Tom Kelly (No. 10), Joe Mauer (No. 7) and Jim Kaat (No. 36).

Top 10 offensive seasons by a Twins position player

It is always interesting to look back over the years and try to determine who has had the best offensive season for your favorite team. In the case of the Minnesota Twins I think that is a pretty easy answer, Rod Carew in 1977 and his run at hitting .400. I was lucky that I was able to witness that season as I was able to get out to Met Stadium and see a number of his games in person. Here is a short 3 minute video (don’t forget to turn on the sound) for you to watch about Rod. An interesting point is that none have taken place at Target Field.

But the Twins have had many great offensive seasons by their players and today we going to provide a list of the top 10 (actually 11) for you. All the players on this list have a WAR of 7.0 or above. As you go down the list you can picture the player in your mind or if you weren’t around or didn’t follow the Twins back then this website will hopefully learn more about that player and his contribution to Minnesota Twins history. As always we are going to use Baseball-Reference.com and their nifty tool “Stathead” to help us identify the players for this list by rating them using WAR.

Twins top 10 offensive seasons by a Twins player

Over the years, there have been 141 players with a WAR of 9.0 or more in a season, here is the list. Any surprises? Feel free to leave your comments.

List of 141 MLB players with WAR of 9.0 or higher

Some of the best Twins we saw at Metropolitan Stadium

Minnesota Twins home from 1961-1981

Baseball was fun to watch at Metropolitan Stadium from 1961-1981 and a lot of MLB and Minnesota Twins “greats” played there. Here is a short list of some of the Twins leaders in some hitting and pitching categories. Keep in mind these are stats accumulated only while playing at Met Stadium.

Games playedHarmon Killebrew-963, Tony Oliva-842, Rod Carew-817

Hits – Rod Carew-1,046, Tony Oliva-935, Harmon Killebrew-844

Twins Milestone Home Runs from 1961-2021

Over the years the Minnesota Twins have hit 8,591 home runs since they started play in 1961 through the 2021 season. Let’s take a look at some milestone home runs, who hit them and where did they hit them. You might want to take note that the Minnesota Twins won 10 of these 12 games.

#1 was hit by Bob Allison on 4-11-61 at Yankee Stadium off Whitey Ford in a Twins 6-0 win in the first game they ever played.

#100 was hit by Bob Allison on 7-19-61 at Wrigley Field off the Angels Ron Kline in a 6-0 Twins win in game one of a DH.

Opening Day Complete Games

As you watch the 2021 MLB Opening Day games tomorrow one of the things that you are unlikely to see is a complete game win by a starting pitcher. Back in the day, it was normal to see starting pitchers throw complete games in their final one or two spring training exhibition starts and complete games on OD were a normal occurrence. Not so in todays baseball.

Last year Chicago Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks pitched a complete game throwing 103 pitches as he shutout the Milwaukee Brewers 3-0 on July 24. It was the first complete game on OD (not counting a five inning effort by Gerrit Cole in 2020) since April 1, 2013 when Clayton Kershaw shutout the San Francisco Giants 4-0. The last complete game on OD in the American League goes back even farther, back to April 1, 2011 when Felix Hernandez got a CG 6-2 win against the Oakland A’s. The last pitcher to pitch a complete game against the Twins was Rick Rhoden when he was pitching for the New York Yankees on April 5, 1988 after the Minnesota Twins won the 1987 World Series.

The Minnesota Twins OD complete games are documented below.

Remembering the Twins first season from 1961 – Week 1

With no baseball being played and “classic” games being broadcast on the radio and television I thought I would do something a bit different, at least for awhile, since no baseball is being played. I thought I would give up a brief recap of Minnesota Twins games from 1961.

I have been working on a very long term project whereas I do a brief recap of Twins games on my “In This Day in Twins History Pages.” So my plan is to give you a brief recap of the Twins first season as it plays out on a weekly basis. For more info on a particular game you can also click on the date and go to the appropriate “In This Day in Twins History Page” as there you will often get to see some player pictures and supporting documentation. We will see how long I can keep up with it, no promises. So let’s see what we have for week one.

Yankee manager Ralph Houk inspects the jacket of Twins manager Cookie Lavagetto prior to the Twins first ever game, played April 11, 1961 at Yankee Stadium. Twins win 6-0.

Twins players with 1,000 or more hits on their Twins resume

The Minnesota Twins have had many great hitters over the years but how many of them have had 1,000 or more hits while wearing a Minnesota Twins uniform? There has been just 14 of them, do you think you can name them all off the top of your head? Grab a pencil and paper and write down their names and see how many of them you can name. Feel free to leave a comment on how you did. When you are all done, click on the link below to see the entire list.

https://tinyurl.com/ya7dprth

Did any of the names on this list surprise you? How many of these players did you get to see play when they were active Twins players? What Twins player didn’t you get to see play that you would have enjoyed watching?

Bob Allison just missed getting on this list with 999 hits while Jacque Jones with 974 hits and Brian Dozier with 928 hits were the others with over 900 hits but under 1,000.

Have a great day and stay safe and healthy during this difficult time as we pass the time waiting for the COVID19 issue to pass.

Nelson Cruz on a record breaking roll!

Nelson Cruz

Stolen from today’s MN Twins GameNotes. This is just crazy, the man is 39 years old. We are lucky to have watched him this year.

ALL ABOUT THE BOOMSTICK: Historic night in Nellyville:

Nelson Cruz has 30 home runs on the season, tied for second most in the AL.

He now has 30 for the sixth straight season. Active players with 30+ homer streaks include Albert Pujols (12) from 2001-12, Edwin Encarnacion (8) from 2012-19, and Miguel Cabrera (7) from 2007-13.

Cruz’s 30 home runs pass Chili Davis‘ 1991 total (29) for the most by a DH in club history, (MLB all-time record is 54 by David Ortiz in 2006).

Current .652 slugging percentage is the highest in club history (next: Killebrew, .606 in 1961).

Three homers last night marked the 12th time in club history:  Bob Allison (’63), Harmon Killebrew (’63), Tony Oliva (’73), Justin Morneau (’07), Max Kepler (’16), Brian Dozier (’16), Eddie Rosario (’17), Byron Buxton (’17), Eddie Rosario (’18), Max Kepler (’19), Nelson Cruz (’19) and Nelson Cruz (’19).

Becomes the 23rd player in baseball history with multiple three-homer games in a season (first in Twins history). The first in MLB history with multiple after turning 39.

After Cruz’s three-homer game July 25 at CWS, he joins Doug DeCinces (8/3 & 8, 1982) and Johnny Mize (7/13 & 20, 1938) as the only players to homer three times within 10 days.

Leads baseball in home runs since ASG (14), next players, Max Kepler and Mancini have nine. Also leads baseball in RBI since ASG (26)

Joins Jason Kubel (2009) as the only two players in club history with four five+ RBI games in a season.

Thanks for the show Boomstick!

Twins leaders with two or more home runs in a game

No surprise here that it is Harmon Killebrew, right?

Results
Rk Player #Matching
1 Harmon Killebrew 35
2 Justin Morneau 20
3 Tony Oliva 18
4 Kent Hrbek 16
5 Bob Allison 15
6 Kirby Puckett 13
7 Gary Gaetti 13
8 Tom Brunansky 11
9 Don Mincher 9
10 Torii Hunter 9
11 Eddie Rosario 8
12 Corey Koskie 8
13 Jacque Jones 8
14 Jimmie Hall 8
15 Brian Dozier 8
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 5/1/2019.

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Eddie Rosario is climbing this list pretty quickly.