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
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.
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.
I went through the history of the Minnesota Twins June Amateur draft choices to see who the best players were that the club drafted, signed and the player debuted with Minnesota across his chest. The player may or may not have played his entire career with the Twins but the WAR numbers are for their entire careers. Why are they ranked by WAR you may ask? Simple, I know of no other way to rank them, so right or wrong, I have chosen B-R WAR.
Twenty five of the 61 rounds shown have no players that qualified meaning that no one ever drafted in that round has made it to the majors with Minnesota. So if the Twins draft you in one of those rounds in the future, the odds are very much against you. Unless you have followed the Twins since day one, you might not recognize or remember some of these players.
Since the June Amateur Draft began in 1965 the Minnesota Twins have selected 72 players in round one, some are their regular first round selections and other are supplemental picks for the loss of a free agent or failure to sign a round one selection.
Over the years the Twins have failed to sign seven first round selections, about 10% of their total first round picks. The seven players that did not sign were four position players and three pitchers. You would think most of these would be high school players that chose to go on to college but that is not the case here, six were college players and only one was a high school player. The last time the Twins organization failed to sign a player was 2000 supplemental pick RHP Aaron Heilman.
The 2017 MLB June Amateur Draft is still a long ways off but since my home town Minnesota Twins have the first overall pick in the draft it got me to thinking. I spent some time recently researching how MLB teams have fared with their first round picks in the June Amateur draft that first started in 1965. The very first pick in the very first draft was made by the Kansas City Athletics and they chose Arizona State University outfielder Rick Monday who went on to a nice 19 year career with three teams with two All-Star selection and a career WAR of 33.1 but he was not HOF worthy. Drafting back in 1965 was an inexact science just like it is today, HOF pitcher Nolan Ryan was drafted in round 12 and ended up with a career war of 81.8 and HOF catcher Johnny Bench who ended up with a 75.0 WAR was selected in round two. Other first round picks that year that you might remember were RHP Joe Coleman, catcher Ray Fosse and third baseman Bernie Carbo.
The question becomes how to rank the teams and I decided to rank them in order of career WAR as determined by Baseball-Reference. I looked at how many players were drafted and signed by each team and then totaled the career WAR numbers and then determined an average WAR for each drafted/signed player.
It was a fun exercise looking at the list of players that were drafted and signed as first round picks. Did they deliver on the promise you thought they had when your team announced that they had drafted and signed them? In baseball there are no guarantees that a first round pick from high school or college will make it to the big leagues and wear your teams colors.
The thing to remember here is that I only looked at first round picks. There are many great players drafted in later rounds but the round one picks get all the ink, most of the money and they wear that “first round pick” label for ever.
With a few exceptions the Minnesota Twins appear to have gone belly up and are just walking through the motions as they continue their march to 100 or more losses. There isn’t much good news coming out of Target Field lately so we have to search for some to watch and cheer for and one of those items is Brian Dozier‘s hitting streak which has now hit 22 games. The Twins have a dozen games left to play in 2016, the first six are at home against the Tigers and the Mariners and the next six are on the road at Kansas City and in Chicago against the the White Sox.
If Dozier plays in every game and his hitting streak continues he could tie the Twins hitting streak record of 31 in Kansas City and then go for the record in Chicago. That would be pretty awesome since we plan to be in Chicago that final baseball week-end of the season catching a few Twins games at US Cellular Field which is a field I have never been at, but I have watched a game at White Sox Park back in 1965.
Keep it up Brian Dozier, we need something exciting to watch and the 2016 season winds down for us Twins fans.
UPDATE: September 21, 2016 – Dozier’s hit streak now stands at 23.
UPDATE: September 23, 2016 – Dozier’s hit streak comes to an end at 24 games in game 2 of a DH against the Detroit Tigers and Justin Verlander on 9/22/2016. Nice run by Mr. Dozier.
From the time the Twins started play in 1961 through yesterday June 14 (2016) the Minnesota Twins have hit 7,462 home runs, 3,746 have been hit on the road and 3,716 have been hit at home. The Twins hit 1,872 home runs at the Metrodome, 1,424 at Met Stadium and 420 at Target Field. The most home runs the Twins have hit on the road have been at the Angels home park where they have hit 257.
Of the Twins 7,462 round-trippers only 50 of them have been inside-the-park home runs. Inside-the-park home runs are relatively rare so I am a bit surprised that when Eduardo Nunez hit the latest one back on June 2 that no one mentioned that it was number 50 in Minnesota Twins history. How rare are they? Only .0067% of Twins home runs are of the inside-the-park variety. So what Twins have hit IPHR’s? We have put together a complete list here for you with the help of Baseball-Reference.
Twins inside-the-park home runs from 1961-June 2, 2016
Baseball draft are so different from all the other sports in many ways but the two main differences that stand out is that baseball drafts are more international than other sports and if you get drafted in baseball you can look forward to spend a number of years in the minor leagues before you have the experience and necessary skill sets to play in the major leagues. Sure there have been some players that went directly to the major leagues but they are rare and the last player to do so I believe is RHP Mike Leake who was drafted eighth overall in 2010 by the Cincinnati Reds from Arizona State and now pitches for the Cardinals. The last Twins player to be drafted and go straight to a big league mound was LHP Eddie Bane who also was from Arizona State.
The June amateur draft is exciting for the fans but it is serious business for the MLB teams that have spent lots of time and money watching these young prospects as they try to determine who is the best player available when it comes time to make their selection. Mistakes in a draft can and do haunt teams for many years. There are many ways to mess up a draft choice, the player may not turn out to be as good as you thought, you might have bypassed a star player, you might not be able to sign the player, the player and/or his agent may state they don’t want to play for you, and of course an injury may cut his career short. If everything goes your way you have yourself a baseball player but the odds are stacked against you.
The Twins lost another game today by a score of 9-2 at Target Field to the Baltimore Orioles. That makes 7 losses in a row and 10 out of their last 11. Let’s look at some facts:
They have won twice in 17 games on the road.
They are 6-10 at their home park
In April they were 7-17
So far in May they are 1-8
They have been outscored 174-111 after 33 games
They are 2-13 against other Central Division teams
Starting pitchers are 3-15
The closer is 2-4 with 2 saves and a 5.40 ERA
Six relievers have appeared in 14 or more games
The pitching staff has the highest ERA in the league
Opponents are hitting .274 against Twins pitching
The Twins are hitting .236
Twins have made more errors than everyone except for Oakland
I could go on and on but what is the point, this team is playing horrendous baseball right now and they can’t catch any breaks either, that’s life. Believe me when I say that this team is not as bad as it is playing right now just like it was not as good as it played in 2015.
Do they miss Torii Hunter in the clubhouse? Sure they do but even Hunter couldn’t help this team play to the level that most people expected. So what is the problem? In 1982 the Twins lost 102 games and after 33 games they were 11-22, the Twins record this year after 33 games is 8-25.
owner Jim Pohlad
I don’t care what Jim Pohlad has said publicly, GM Terry Ryan and manager Paul Molitor have to be on the hot seat right now. Hitting coach Tom Brunansky and pitching coach Neil Allen should not be buying any green banana’s either. My prediction for what is it worth is this. The Twins have a day off on Thursday and then play three games in Cleveland and three more in Detroit after that. If the Twins don’t play .500 on the road this week, Paul Molitor will not return to Minnesota with the team as the Twins manager.
Paul Molitor
Twins players may respect Paul Molitor as a Hall of Fame player but they don’t know how to play for him. In my opinion Molitor is a poor handler of the pitching staff and is on pace once again to burn out his bullpen. I don’t see anything that Molitor has done to motivate these players or to help them win games, he writes out a line-up by going with the hot bats and just lets them play. That probably works great for a veteran team but not for a team this young and inexperienced. Sometimes a team and a manager just do not mesh. Maybe it is not Molitor’s fault but life isn’t fair.
This team needs someone to get mad bust up some things, call out some players for their brain farts and put the whip to them. These players are young but this isn’t their first rodeo, they have played the game before and they are better than this. It is about time someone tells them that and also tells them that if they can’t play like major leaguer’s then they won’t be playing in Minnesota. See ball, hit ball. Baseball is baseball no matter what level you are playing it, this isn’t rocket science or brain surgery. The bases are still the same distance apart, the mound is the same distance from home plate. Sure the major leagues are tough but if you can’t compete, then pack your bags and go home. Fans are paying good money to watch the Twins play baseball st a high level, if they wanted to watch a bunch of minor leaguers play they would buy tickets to watch the St. Paul Saints play.
I am surprised more Twins fans aren’t madder than hell and telling Twins management that they aren’t going to take this crap any more. Why no fans burning their tickets or fans in the stands with paper bags on their heads? I love baseball but the Twins are squeezing the fun out of the game. Call the Twins and tell them what you think and what you expect. The Twins have no excuses as far as I am concerned, don’t play the “this is a young team card”, all I care about is seeing the number in the “W” column increasing.
The players today seem to need more rest today than the players did years ago. Sure, they play eight more games then teams did in the past but still you have to wonder what the cause really is and does it pay off in the long run? The last Twins player to play in 160 or more games in a season was Justin Morneau in 2008. If you look at the list you can’t help but notice that three of the 10 names are shortstops, not exactly an easy position. Paul Molitor did it at the age of 39 but then again he was strictly a DH. Zoilo Versalles played 160 or more games four times and also had a season with 159 games and the man weighed 146 dripping wet with rocks in his pockets. You wonder how he did it.
In the American League this past season Manny Machado played in a league leading 162 games and Kyle Seager and Elvis Andrus played in 160 or more. The only National Leaguer to play in 160 or more games was Anthony Rizzo.
I seldom missed a day of school back in Taylors Falls and I continued that practice at work during my working career. The Navy of course reinforced the idea that going to work every day was the only way. I am old school and retired now but back in the day when I worked I took a lot of pride in the fact that I showed up for work day in and day out rain or shine. I figured I was being paid to work so I showed up day after day. It used to drive me crazy when I knew that certain co-workers stayed home because they were hung-over or just plain didn’t feel like working. There were probably times when it would have been safer to stay home due to the snow or ice but not me, I was off to work.
Working every day carries over to my enjoyment of baseball, I like players that come to play ball each day and don’t take time off because they are tired or have a hang-nail. These players are being paid big bucks to play, not to sit on the bench and rest, they can rest on their own time like the rest of us.
So where am I going with this? Today we are going to take a look at the Minnesota Twins players that came to play. Today’s players are playing fewer games then their compatriots did 50 or so years ago for a variety of reasons. The change however; is not as great as I expected to find. When was the last time that a Twins player played in every game that season? That would be Justin Morneau in 2008 when he appeared in all 163 regular season games. Since 1961 and 55 baseball seasons only six Twins players have played in every game and Harmon Killebrew is the only one to do it more than once.
