TWINS TRIVIA is hopefully a fun and informative site that will help you to better enjoy the Minnesota Twins and their wonderful history. “History never looks like history when you are living through it” – John Gardner, former Secretary of Health
Minnesota native and star at the University of Minnesota
First-round draft pick (3rd overall) in 1977 by the Milwaukee Brewers
Finished second to the Detroit Tigers Lou Whitaker in ROY voting in 1978
21-year major league career, spanning from 1978-1998, primarily with the Brewers, but also spending three seasons each with the Blue Jays and his hometown Twins.
He started out as a 2B, then shifted to 3B, and ultimately played the most games as a DH.
Seven-time All-Star
Molitor, nicknamed “The Ignitor” had only modest power, with a high of 22 HR coming late in his career in 1993. But he was a great baserunner and run scorer, with eight seasons of 30+ SB, and five with 100+ runs, including leading the AL in runs three times.
He never won a batting title, but led the AL in hits three times, and led the AL in doubles once and triples once.
Molitor did well in the post-season too, batting .368 with 6 HR in 117 AB in five series, including taking home World Series MVP honors in 1993 while with Toronto when he went 12-24 with 2 HR, 2 triples, 2 doubles, and 3 stolen bases.
Overall had 3,319 hits, 1,782 runs, 605 doubles, 234 HR, 504 SB, a .306/.369/.448 slash line, and a 122 OPS+
Career WAR is 75.7 (50th place all-time in position player WAR)
The Minnesota Twins announced today that they have hired Derek Shelton as their 15th manager. Shelton will replace Rocco Baldelli who was fired after seven seasons at the skipper of the Minnesota Twins the day after the 2025 season ended.
Baldelli managed the Twins to a 70-97 mark this season and a fourth place finish in the AL Central that saw the Cleveland Guardians and Detroit Tigers advance to the playoffs. Baldelli had three first place finishes, one of which was the COVID shortened 2020 season. Baldelli had a record of 527-505 (.511) and had a postseason record of 3-8.
Shelton himself was fired as the Pittsburgh Pirates manager this past May after the Pirates got off to a 12-26 start. He finished his six year Pirates managing career with a 306-440 record with two fourth place and four fifth place finishes. His record in Pittsburgh wasn’t great but to be fair the Pirates payroll is lower than the Twins payroll and ownership hasn’t made much of an effort to field a winning team.
Shelton has a history with Minnesota, serving as the bench coach for the Twins in 2018 and 2019, working under managers Paul Molitor and Rocco Baldelli. He was considered an important part of the 2019 team that won 101 games.
With the extraordinarily warm weather we are having in Minnesota where the grass is still green, the water in the lakes is still liquid and Thanksgiving is just around the corner it is hard to believe we are well into the fall/winter sports season. The Minnesota Vikings, Minnesota Wild and Minnesota Timberwolves all doing better than expected, pushing the Minnesota Twins off sports fans radar screens.
That is in spite of the fact that the Twins have announced that MLB will produce and distribute Twins games in 2025 but no specifics pertaining to cost were provided, the Pohlad family announced their intent to explore a sale of the Minnesota Twins, the team fired all three hitting coaches as well as its assistant bench coach, GM Thad Levine decided to pursue other interests and was replaced by Jeremy Zoll, Alex Kirilloff announced he was retiring at the age of 26, the team announced an executive leadership succession plan, to be implemented in the first quarter of 2025 whereas club President & CEO Dave St. Peter will transition to the role of Strategic Advisor; and President, Baseball Operations Derek Falvey will be elevated to President, Baseball & Business Operations. My favorite announcement so far though is the Twins also announcing in a very low-key manner a new (and I think complicated) ticket plan that includes the sale of MYTWINS Memberships and Reward Plans ranging from $600 to $7500. Just another method of of reaching into Twins fans pockets.
All of this with the Twins season ending less than a month ago and the MLB Winter Meetings (December 8-12) in Dallas still two weeks off. We have been very busy here at the home of Twinstrivia.com as we sold our home in Plymouth, MN in mid-October and are preparing to move to Corcoran, MN around Thanksgiving. When you live some place for 38+ years you tend to accumulate way too much stuff including in my case Twins memorabilia and other stuff. I first thought about skipping a Twins Turkey of the Year award this year but that just wouldn’t fair when the Minnesota Twins had an epic collapse that saw them drop from second place all the way to fourth. A 9-18 September had the Twins players calling their travel agents and making new travel plans that included more golf and no baseball. A season like the Twins just had in 2024 requires that a Twins Turkey of the Year winner be named yet again.
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.
Minnesota Twins fans and the team itself had such high expectations going into 2021 and yet as we approach the midway point in the season we find the team floundering badly at 31-42. The season opened on April 1 and the team reached their high-water mark for the season on April 8 when they were three games over .500 with a 5-2 record. Since then it has been one step forward and two steps back.
Derek Falvey
So how do you explain this? How does a team that everyone expected to be a serious contender and pretty much a playoff lock in 2021 play such terrible baseball that it is basically unwatchable? Where do you start? Like in most businesses you have to start at the top.
Welcome to our second decade of Twins Turkey of the year awards. I sure hope you are all enjoying the snow that we were blessed with over the last few days as you made your way to enjoy Thanksgiving with your loved ones. Let’s get right down to business of naming this years Twins Turkey of the Year.
When I go to the ballpark or watch a baseball game on TV I always expect the teams best players to be on the field day in and day out during the baseball season. I am old school in that regard and it is disappointing to me when today’s managers rest players so frequently. I believe that players are paid to play and only an injury that does not physically allow them to play should keep them off the field and in the dugout.
Justin Morneau
Apparently that is not how the Twins play baseball. Coming to the ballpark and playing every day is not how it is done in Minnesota. The last player to play 160 or more games in a season for the Minnesota Twins was Justin Morneau back in 2008, that was 12 years ago. Morneau put together a 318 consecutive games played streak that started on June 28, 2007 and ended on June 20, 2009.
Looking at just the American League (due to no DH in the National League) this past season there were four players that appeared in 160 or more games and there have been no instances from 1961-2019 where there hasn’t been at least one players appearing in 160 games in a season, excluding strike shortened seasons.
Going back to 1961 the Twins have the third longest streak in the AL without a player appearing in 160 or more games. The last Cleveland Indians player to play in 160 or more games was Grady Sizemore in 2007 and the longest streak in the AL without a player playing in 160 games belongs to the Los Angeles Angels who had Garret Anderson and Troy Glaus qualify back in 2001. I found it interesting that the Texas Rangers who did not begin play until 1972 and play in the very hot Texas temperatures had 13 players play in 160 or more games between 1972-2019.
Minnesota Twins manager Rocco Baldelli was voted as the American League Manager of the Year by members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Ballots for each award were submitted before the start of the postseason from two writers in every city, based on the league covered. Of the 30 ballots cast in the AL, Baldelli and New York Yankee skipper Aaron Boone each received 13 first-place votes, but Baldelli pushed ahead with 13 second-place votes, as compared to Boone’s nine, along with two third-place votes. Baldelli’s buddy Kevin Cash, who managed the Tampa Rays finished third in the voting.
The youngest manager in the American League and a rare managerial hire from outside the Twins’ organization, Rocco Baldelli lived up to all the anticipation in 2019, becoming the seventh skipper in Major League history to win at least 100 games in his rookie season as he guided Minnesota to its first division championship since 2010. Baldelli is the Twins’ fourth Manager of the Year Award winner, joining his three most recent predecessors in Tom Kelly (1991), Ron Gardenhire (2010) and Paul Molitor (2017).
Between 1973-2018 there have been 275 players that have been the Twins DH in at least one game. However, to qualify for this list which ranks them in Baseball-Reference WAR order the player must have been the DH in at least 51% of their games while wearing a Twins uniform. Tony Oliva is the Twins all-time leader in games played as the Twins DH with 406 and his is also the very first Twins DH but he was the Twins DH in only 24% of his games so he does not qualify for this list
The 2018 baseball season is in the books, free agents everywhere are sitting back and waiting for the offers to pour in, a number of teams (including our Twins) have hired new managers. The temperature is 31 degrees outside and there is a slight coating of snow on the ground here in Plymouth so we know it is time to start sorting our candidates for the 2018 Twins Turkey of the Year.
The Twins finished in second place again this season behind the Cleveland Indians. This past season the Twins were 78-84 as compared to 85-77 in 2017 and this year they were just 13 games back as compared to 17 games behind the year previous. Yet the 2018 Twins were looked on as failures as compared to the 2017 team that was a Wild Card participant albeit for just the one game against the New York Yankees. Manager Paul Molitor was the American League Manager of the Year in 2017 and after the 2018 season ended he found himself unemployed along with most of his coaching staff after signing a new three-year contract just a year earlier. Twins fans were unhappy and attendance dropped to its lowest point since 2004 at the Metrodome. Meanwhile the Twins Front Office added to staff and continued the “new ways of fielding a winning team” such as increasing the number of shifts, playing four outfielders here and there and jumping on the new “opener” strategy employed by teams such as Tampa Bay and Oakland.
