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
With the Minnesota Twins having 57 MLB seasons in the rear view mirror, the Houston Astros winning the World Series in 7 games, the temperatures in the mid 40’s and with no snow on the ground it is a good time to look back on and revisit the hitters that have found Twins pitching to their liking over the years.
Today we are going to take a look at Twins opponents that have 200 or more hits against the Twins, there are 23 players who fit this criteria. 200 hits is a lot of hits. Six of the 23 hit from the left side, 13 were right-handed hitters and just four (Vizquel, Martinez, Wilson and Murray) of them were switch-hitters. Just missing out on this list were Frank Thomas with 194 hits, Al Kaline with 192 and Sal Bando with 190 hits.
One oddity that I noticed when looking over this data was that only two players got their 200 or more hits from one spot in the batting order. Ricky Henderson had 214 out of his 215 hits against Minnesota hitting lead-off while Carl Yastrzemski had 228 of his 321 hits out of the three-hole.
WOW! Look at the Hall of Famer’s on this list plus some of the others will be in shortly. Anyone on this list surprise you? How about players that you thought would be on the list but are not?
DH – Edgar Martinez – What? Not who you thought? You probably forget about this All-Star third baseman turned DH but this man was a hitting machine. Martinez started his career at the hot corner in 1987 but didn’t get a full-time gig until 1990 when he was 27. In 1995 he became a full-time DH after numerous injuries kept him from playing full-time. During his 18 year big league career he won two batting titles, five Silver Slugger awards and was a seven time All-Star.
He appeared in 2,055 games and had a career average of .312 and an OPS of .933. Martinez had 2,247 career hits and 514 of them were doubles and 309 were of the long ball variety.
Edgar found hitting against the Twins to his liking, in 436 PA’s he hit .353 with an OPS of 1.044 with 27 doubles, 25 home runs and 78 RBI and he crossed the plate 80 times. He also walked 58 times and struck out just 60 times. Twins managers had him walked intentionally eight times, more often than any other DH.
One of the more frequent questions I get pertains to switch-hitters that played for the Minnesota Twins so I thought I would put together the entire list of Twins players both position players and pitchers that swung from both sides of the plate. In this case I ranked then in order of home runs hit. The list includes Twins pitchers as well as position players.
You can make a strong case that Mickey Mantle was the best switch-hitter in the AL as he hit .300 (with 500 or more PA’s) or more nine time and Victor Martinez who remains active today has hit. 300 eight times as has Bernie Williams. Roberto Alomar did it seven times.
The Twins have not had as much luck with their switch-hitters, the only Twin to hit .300 (.302) or better with at least 500 plate appearances was Cristian Guzman in 2001. It kind of makes you wonder if switch hitting is worth the effort. From 1901 to 1960 the Washington Senators never had a switch-hitter that hit .300 or better with at least 500 PA’s.
In baseball, a switch-hitter is a batter that bats either from the right side or the left side depending on if the pitcher is right or left-handed. Most curveballs break away from batters hitting from the same side as the opposing pitcher making such pitches often harder to hit than those from the other side. History tells us that most right-handed batters hit better against lefty pitchers and left-handed batters hit better against right-handers. This so-called platoon benefit is why managers use pinch hitters and LOOGY’s and why some players want to become switch-hitters.
Switch-hitting at its best
Switch-hitters have been around for ever it seems and yet according to sources that I have researched, only about 6% of baseball batters have been switch-hitters. You have to wonder if switch-hitting is such an advantage, why haven’t more of baseball best hitters been switch-hitters? The best career batting average for a switch-hitter is .316 by Frankie Frisch and he currently ranks 71st all-time. Some of the best switch-hitters in our era have been Chipper Jones at .306 and Pete Rose at .303. Detroit Tigers DH Victor Martinez has a career average of .302 making him the highest currently active switch-hitter. Switch-hitters have been around for a long time and there have been some pretty good ones over the years, in addition to the players I just mentioned, you have to add players like Mickey Mantle, Eddie Murray, Roberto Alomar, Bernie Williams, George Davis, Lance Berkman, Tim Raines and Chili Davis to the list of switch-hitting greats.
Switch-hitting and the rules
A question often asked is can a batter switch for right to left or left to right during an at bat. The only rule that I can find that seemingly applies is 6.06(b) which states that “A batter is out for illegal action when he steps from one batter’s box to the other while the pitcher is in position ready to pitch.” Based on that, it appears you can switch from one batters box to the other as often as you want as long as you do it before the pitcher gets in his pitching position.
In the Twins 53 years of existence the team has had 62 players that were switch-hitters but not all of them actually batted and we will touch more on that later. The Twins very first switch-hitter was actually a pitcher, Pedro Ramos. Ramos pitched and batted (1 for 4 with 2 RBI) in the Twins very first game when Ramos and the Twins shut out the New York Yankees 6-0 on April 11, 1961 at Yankee Stadium. The first Twins switch-hitting position player to appear in a game was SS Marty Martinez when he had an at bat against the Yankees at Met Stadium on May 30, 1962 in game 2 of a doubleheader. Martinez actually appeared in 3 earlier games as a Twins but was used strictly as a pinch-runner by manager Sam Mele. It wasn’t until 1976 however; that the Twins actually had a regular position player switch-hitting and that year they had two, rookie catcher Butch Wynegar and SS Roy Smalley. The Twins are playing their 53rd season and there has only been one year, 1973 that they have not had a switch-hitter step into the batters box wearing a Twins uniform. On the other hand, they had nine switch-hitters (Cristian Guzman was the only starter) at one time or another on their 1999 team that finished 63-97.
Twins switch-hitting pitchers
Looking at the Twins 62 switch-hitters, eleven of them were pitchers and claimed to be switch-hitters but only Pedro Ramos, Jim Perry, Dan Serafini, JC Romero, and Joe Mays actually set foot in the batters box. The other six, Stan Perzanowski, Darrell Jackson, Pete Filson, Jason Ryan, Pat Neshek, and Eric Hacker were switch-hitters only on the back of their baseball cards because they never batted in a Twins game. Jim Perry actually hit five home runs as a Twin.
Home runs from each side of the plate club
The Twins switch-hitter with the most home runs is Roy Smalley and he hit 163 career home runs and 110 of them were when he was a Minnesota Twin. The “home runs from each side of the plate” club is relatively exclusive but three of the members were Twins. Roy Smalley accomplished that rare feat twice, once against the Boston Red Sox at the Metrodome on May 30, 1986 and once earlier in his career as a New York Yankee in 1982. Chili Davis became the second Twin to join the club when he did it against the Royals on October 2, 1992. Ryan Doumit became the third Twin to do so when too joined the exclusive fraternity against the Royals on July 22, 2012. Chili Davis hit a home run from each side of the plate 11 times in his illustrious 19 year career. Just for comparisons sake, Mickey Mantle did it on 10 occasions.
One oddity that seems to stand out to me is how few of the switch-hitters employed by the Twins over the years actually threw left-handed. If you exclude the 11 switch-hitting pitchers from the list you are left with 51 switch-hitters and only one of the 51 threw left-handed, the other fifty were right-handed. Kind of strange. The lone left-handed position player was John Moses. But keep in mind that John Moses an outfielder by trade, actually pitched in 3 games for the Twins and it gets even stranger.
Twins best switch-hitters
So let’s take a look at the Twins top switch-hitters, there is no good way to rank them so I will list here all the Twins switch-hitters that have 1,000 or more plate appearances in a Twins uniform. The chart also shows positions played, games played, home runs and batting average. All the numbers on this chart are their Twins career numbers. Many of these players played for other teams but those numbers are not included here, I am only interested in their numbers as Minnesota Twins for this story.
Some interesting numbers and players on this chart, about half the players were starters and half were utility players. No surprise that Smalley is the leader in home runs or that Chili Davis is second on that list but finding that Cristian Guzman is number 3 in the Twins switch-hitter home run list really surprised me.
A bonus question for you, this Twins switch-hitter had a career .425 batting average albeit in just 43 plate appearances, do you know who he is?
A couple of days ago it was reported that the Detroit Tigers have reached an agreement with free agent 1B Prince Fielder on a 9 year $214 million deal. This deal took place just a couple of days after the Tigers reported they may have lost C/1B/DH Victor Martinez for the season due to a torn ACL. Martinez only hit 12 home runs for Detroit last year but he knocked in 100 runs and he hit .330 while Miguel Cabrera hit .344 with 30 home runs while knocking in 108. The top two home run hitters for the Tigers were Cabrera with 31 and SS Jhonny Peralta who hit 21 long balls. Fielder, playing with the Milwaukee Brewers last season hit 38 while teammate Ryan Braun hit 33 for a total of 71 long balls between them. The big question is how do you keep both of these first baseman in the line-up, Cabrera has already been reported as saying that he can move to 3B but having Fielder at 1B and Cabrera at 3B seems like a real stretch, teams would be bunting left and right. Sure one of these guys can DH but both Fielder and Cabrera are over weight and playing in the field helps to control that to some degree, have one sitting on the bench can’t be a good thing. A home run combo like Cabrera and Fielder made me wonder what kind of power combinations the Twins have fielded over the years. Here is what I found.
