Tag: Kirby Puckett

Twins walk-off wins – 1961-2017

Twins walk-off King
Harmon Killebrew

In the past 57 seasons the Minnesota Twins have walked off their opponents 403 times. Kirby Puckett leads the Minnesota Twins in career walk-off’s wins by delivering the winning run in some manner 11 times, it might have been on a hit, walk, HBP, error or a sacrifice. Second on the list is Harmon Killebrew. I guess that is why these guys are Hall of Fame players.

The Twins have walked off their opponent with a single a total of 196 times. Rod Carew  did it seven times and is the leader in this category and it has been done five times by Alexi Casilla, Harmon Killebrew, Brian Harper, Larry Hisle, Kent Hrbek and Jacque Jones.

The Twins have hit 108 walk-off home runs and Justin Morneau leads the pack here with five and is followed Gary Gaetti, Harmon Killebrew, Kirby Puckett, Tony Oliva and Kent Hrbek with four each. One was an inside the park job by Tim Teufel.

The Twins have walked off their opponents with doubles 35 times and Kirby Puckett did it 3 times, the following players each did it twice, Cristian Guzman, Rich Reese, Tony Oliva, Eduardo Escobar, Shannon Stewart, Glenn Borgmann  and Tom Brunansky.

The Sacrifice Fly has led to 25 Twins walk-off wins with only Zoilo Versalles and Cristian Guzman doing it more than once.

The Twins have walked-off opponents 12 times on an opposing team error.

The Twins have walked-off their opponent 11 times when they drew a bases-loaded walk. 

The Twins have had six walk-off triples and no one has more than one.

The Twins have celebrated a walk-off win six times after a simple ground out.

The Twins have two walk-off wins via getting hit by a pitch (Paul Molitor and Max Kepler).

The first player to deliver a walk-off win was Zoilo Versalles and the most recent to do it is Byron Buxton.

 

This Day in Twins History – November 22, 1989

 

Kirby Puckett

Kirby Puckett becomes the first major league player ever to sign a contract that calls for an average salary of $3 million per year when he inks a pact with the Twins for $9 million over three years.

Just a short 28 years ago this was huge money, the minimum MLB salary back then was $68,000. Jumping forward to 2017 the minimum salary for a MLB player was $535,000 a year. The highest paid player in 2017 I believe was pitcher Clayton Kershaw at $33 million.  

Oh! How times have changed.

Puckett Hits the Jackpot: First $3 Million Man

Don’t forget to check out our Today in Twins History page daily to see what kinds of Twins history took place that day and everyday.

According to ELIAS – 2017 Minnesota Twins

Big four-game sweep as Twins tame Tigers in Detroit

The Twins completed a four game sweep in Detroit yesterday with a 10–4 win. They won the first three games of the series 12–1, 7–3, and 10–4, outscoring the Tigers 39–12 in the series. On only one other occasion since moving to Minnesota in 1961, the Twins swept a 4-game series with that high a scoring margin: they outscored the Red Sox 33–6 in a four game sweep at Fenway Park, July 18–21, 1991. Kirby Puckett and Chili Davis combined for 13 RBIs between them in the series. The Twins would go on to defeat the Braves 4–3 in the World Series that season.

According to ELIAS – Joe Mauer

Three-hit game for Mauer

Joe Mauer

Joe Mauer rapped out three hits in the Twins’ win over the Brewers yesterday. It was the 162nd three-hit game of Mauer’s career, third most for any Twins player since the franchise moved to Minnesota from Washington in 1961, behind Hall of Famers Rod Carew (214 three-hit games for the Twins) and Kirby Puckett (208).

Did you know?

At the 2017 All-Star break the Twins record from 1961 to current stands at 4,461 wins and 4,560 losses. The Twins have won a total of 410 games in walk-off fashion and lost 412 games via the walk-off. The means that 09.11% of the Twins games end via a walk-off in one fashion or another. 

The best season the Twins have ever had for walk-off wins was 1987 when they had 16 walk-off victories. The fewest walk-off wins occurred in 1982 when they had just two.  So far in 2017 they have also had just two walk-off wins.

Naturally there is the other side of the coin and the Minnesota Twins suffered 15 walk-off defeats in 1964 but only had three in 1993 and 2006. So far this season they have just one walk-off loss.

Twins walk-off King

So who is the Twins walk-off king? That would be non other than Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett who had 12 walk-off hits in his Twins career, Kent Hrbek was not far behind with 11. 

 

Did you know?

I recently bought a book called “Extra Innings Baseball” at an estate sale and it has some interesting facts and stories and I thought I would share a couple of items from the book even though I just started reading it.

Did you know that: Kirby Puckett was the first player born in the 1960s to be elected to the Hall of Fame?

Socks Seybold

Did you know that: One of the oddest home runs in history took place at American League Park which was the home of the Washington Senators from 1904 to 1910. In this ballpark there was a doghouse near the outfield flag pole. The groundskeeper stored the flag in the doghouse between games. One afternoon the doghouse door was left open, and a member of the Senators hit the ball inside of it. Philadelphia A’s center fielder Socks Seybold crawled to retrieve the ball and got stuck allowing the batter to circle the bases for an “inside the doghouse” home run.

Did you know that an outfielder is sometimes referred to as a “gardener”?

Did you know that: The great Hall of Famer Walter Johnson who pitched for the Washington Senators from 1907 to 1927 and who many consider the greatest pitcher ever won 417 games and yet had a 5.3 SO/9 rate? Still he had 3,509 career strikeouts, maybe it had something to do with a 2.17 ERA, a 1.06 WHIP and a 0.1 HR/9 ratio.

I will let you know when I find more “cool” stuff. Have a wonderful Memorial Day week-end and don’t forget why you can celebrate Memorial Day!

 

Memorial Day history

Major League debuts as Minnesota Twins – Puckett and Hart

Both of today’s major league debuts as Minnesota Twins took place in the same game at Anaheim Stadium in a 5-0 win over the California Angels.

Kirby Puckett (OF) – May 8, 1984 – Drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 1st round (3rd pick) of the 1982 amateur draft (January). An impressive major league debut indeed!

 

Mike Hart

Mike Hart (OF) – May 8, 1984 – Signed as a Free Agent with the Minnesota Twins on January 31, 1983.

The 2017 Minnesota Twins have arrived

The season opener for your favorite team is always a special day and that day has arrived for my favorite team the Minnesota Twins. I won’t be at the game in person as I am still in Florida but you can bet your bippies that I will be watching the Twin take on the Royals.

I have high hopes for this team, no, not playoff type hopes but I want to see this team breakout and take a giants step forward and show all those baseball experts that they are a team that will need to be reckoned with in the near future. The team is due to hit on some players that they didn’t expect to be stars, it happens all the time but it hasn’t happened in Minnesota since Brian Dozier came on the scene.

The Twins have suffered some bad luck since they moved into Target Field and some folks still say it was those 13 trees that were removed from Target Field after the inaugural 2010 season that started the down hit slide. Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, but this spring like every spring brings new hope, even for us old-timers that got to go to Met Stadium and the HHH Metrodome to see the Killer, Carew, Puckett, Hrbek, and Santana take the Twins to heights that today’s fans can old dream about.

But our team this season is the 2017 version of the Minnesota Twins, how much do you know about these guys? I have put together a little quiz for you to test your knowledge about this years team and staff. Have fun and good luck.

Know your 2017 Twins

Here is a 25 question quiz to see how well you know your 2017 Minnesota Twins players and staff. The information is based on the Opening Day roster and includes players that start the season on the DL. Give it a shot, it is multiple choice so if nothing else you can always guess. Most of all have fun!

 

Looking at the Minnesota Twins top 10 center fielders

The Minnesota Twins have had a strong history of good center field play and when you look at this list you can certainly see why. The rankings are in Baseball-Reference WAR order and the player needed to have played center field in at least 50% of his games. 

How many of these guys did you get to see play? An old fossil like me gets to say he saw them all play and one of my favorites although he did not play here very long was Lenny Green. I am not saying that Green was in Puckett’s or Hunter’s class as a center fielder but I enjoyed watching him play. 

Minnesota Twins top 10 center fielders

 

Buxton

Todays Twins center fielder is still tying to prove he belongs on this list and he just might but he is going to have to show us his stuff. Can he prove to be even better than hall of famer Kirby Puckett? That is a tall order, we will just have to wait and see and it should be fun. I am expecting a HUGE breakout season from Buxton in 2017.

Some of the guys that didn’t make the top 10 list above are Carlos Gomez, Aaron Hicks, Buxton, Alex Cole, and Ken Landreaux.

 

Twins Top 10 Catchers

Twins Top 10 First Baseman

Twins Top 10 Second Basemen

Twins Top 10 Third Baseman

Twins Top 10 Shortstops

Twins Top 10 Right Fielders

Twins Top 10 Center Fielders

Twins Top 10 Left Fielders

Top Twins DH

Most plate appearances with zero home runs

The players on the list below had 400 or more plate appearances in a season as Minnesota Twins but hit no home runs. That didn’t necessarily mean they had a bad season, as you can see that second baseman Rod Carew led the American League in batting that year. Al Newman and Ben Revere make the list twice each.

Rod Carew
Rk Player PA HR Year G AB R H RBI BA Pos
1 Rod Carew 591 0 1972 142 535 61 170 51 .318 *4/H
2 Kirby Puckett 583 0 1984 128 557 63 165 31 .296 *8
3 Ben Revere 553 0 2012 124 511 70 150 32 .294 *98/7H
4 Al Newman 521 0 1989 141 446 62 113 38 .253 *456H/7D8
5 Ben Revere 481 0 2011 117 450 56 120 30 .267 *87H/9D
6 Al Newman 433 0 1990 144 388 43 94 30 .242 *465H/7
7 Lyman Bostock 400 0 1975 98 369 52 104 29 .282 *987/HD
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 1/27/2017.

.