On July 16, 2003, the Twins completed what is considered to be their best deadline move ever—swapping Bobby Kielty for Shannon Stewart. It was a trade most “experts,” myself included, knocked at the time. Kielty never went on to develop the kind of power expected of him though. Meanwhile, the Twins went on to go 46-23 the rest of the way home.
The Legend of Shannon Stewart was written into Twins lore during those three months. While the rest of his time with the Twins Stewart was merely a fair replacement for what Matt Lawton used to bring to the club, in July, August and September well it was another story. According to legend, Stewart crapped thunder, spat line shots out of his mouth like sunflower seeds and was automatically awarded first base anytime an opposing pitcher looked at him funny. He single-handedly picked the Twins up out of the morass they were in, 7.5 games behind the White Sox, and reversed the deficit single-handedly. While most people will rightly call B.S. on the first part of the paragraph, the second part—widely accepted by sportswriters and Twins fans as universal truth—is just as much of a snow job.
Stewart definitely helped the Twins coming home. But in terms of factors that led to the comeback, he ranks at best as number three IMO. The first two, in no certain order, are:
• Joe Mays was doing his best Livan Hernandez prequel for the first three months of the season, His won-loss record of 8-7 belying the fact that his ERA was making fans long for the days of Sean Bergman. On July 11, the Twins finally had enough and banished him out of the rotation. His replacement went on to do okay. After dropping his first two decisions, he didn’t lose the rest of the year. The next year he won his first Cy Young Award. It’s really amazing what Johan Santana could do.
• The Twins first series after the All-Star Break/Stewart trade was against Oakland. The White Sox was against Detroit. It marked the Twins’ last game against a playoff team during the regular season and the White Sox last game against a Detroit team that was trying to avoid losing more games than the 1962 Mets. The White Sox would hit every playoff team during the second half of the season, and the Twins had 13 games scheduled against the Tigers.
The last bullet point is the one to keep an eye on. Orlando Cabrera may be a step forward for the Twins, but it’s more one small step for man than one giant leap for mankind. At best, it might counteract the step back Anthony Swarzak represents from Kevin Slowey, which doesn’t take into account the unknown step backwards that Joe Crede’s shoulder potentially represents. But assuming the Twins win the AL Central in 2009, this weekend’s series against the An gels represents the Twins’ last series against a playoff team in the regular season, where the Tigers and White Sox get a heaping helping of the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays coming home.
The day isn’t over, but given the trading chits the Twins have the odds of making a move that is considered a big step is remote. Fortunately, the Twins still have a very good chance at winning the division this year.
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The Twins apparently signed Mark Grudzielanek this weekend to a minor league contract. One can see the thought process that went into making this decision. “Hey, look at how close his last name is to Mientkiewicz. He might have a magic glove. Sign him. Sign him. Sign him.” I could start naming the negatives on Grudzielanek pretty easily. He’s 39. You need to place him in bubble wrap between games to keep him healthy. He’s the definition of an empty .300 batting average lately and he still is pretty adept with the glove, but he’s 39 and the number of games he’s capable of playing is trending toward a negative number. With that said, this is a step toward progress for the organization.
The base instinct is to compare this to a Bret Boone move, but this isn’t necessarily the case. Yes, Grudzielanek may very well implode. But if he does, it’s Ft. Myers or New Britain’s problem, not the Twins. This is how the Yankees and the Red Sox handle the situation of signing a veteran retread, instead of the usual Twins’ method of plugging him immediately into the hole and wondering why suddenly the bad production you were getting at second base took a dive. If he’s producing in the minors, on the other hand, why not give him a shot?
Sticking the veteran retread in the minors and letting them earn a roster spot. What a novel concept?
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It has been noted by many a writer that the baseball stars of the 1980s don’t get the proper respect that they’re due. As they’ve come up for Hall of Fame voting, it has been argued that the number of votes don’t match up with how much they dominated their era. There’s bound to be something of a generation gap between kids who grew up watching Land of the Lost and those who grew up watching Barney and Friends. Why shouldn’t there be a generation gap between the players they grew up idolizing?
Kent Hrbek made his first plate appearance with the Twins on August 24, 1981. As a young prospect, his swing and approach at the plate was routinely compared to the great Ted Williams. From that aspect, Hrebek’s career can be considered a disappointment. At the same time, from 1982 to 1993, Hrbek had a pretty good decade. He was runner-up for the MVP award in 1984, in a year where he almost singlehanded propelled the Twins offense into contention. In 1987 and 1988, it could be argued that he was the best first baseman in the American League. Outside of that, he was solidly above average, until 1992 when a decade worth of back injuries caught up with him in a hurry. It’s a story that isn’t that uncommon from that decade. The 1980s was known for its hard-drinking, chain-smoking first baseman like Steve Balboni, Mark Grace and so on. Hrbek definitely fit that mold.
Hear me out on this one because it might be a stretch, but in many ways Hrbek was the bizarre Mark McGwire. Like Hrbek, McGwire fought injuries throughout much of his mid-20s to early-30s fighting back problems. After a great rookie year, McGwire fell off a bit. His numbers were pretty good, but not exactly world beating for a number of years.
The big difference between the two could very well be their choice of drugs. The 90s were the era of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, and certainly McGwire’s name has been tied to accusations about them. The big thing to note is that pro baseball players don’t take performance enhancing drugs to get bigger (it could be argued that Ken Griffey Jr.’s physique evolved in a similar manner to Barry Bonds’, and no one would accuse Griffey of being on the juice.) The key benefit to steroids is that it helps you fight off the minor aches and pains that accumulate through a 162 game season. McGwire may or may not have taken steroids. But the fact that he was able to shake off major back problems in his mid-30s and produce record breaking seasons is fishy at best. In the 1980s, there were two completely different performance enhancing drugs of choice to block out the dings and aches caused by a 162 game schedule—cocaine and beer. Many 1980s players, notably Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden, saw their careers completely destroyed by the former. Hrbek chose the latter. It didn’t completely destroy him, but it also didn’t really help his back either. And at an age when McGwire was suddenly getting healthy, Hrbek’s career was winding down.
I’m not saying that Hrbek should have gone out and done steroids. I’m just saying that Hrbek’s accomplishments should be judged by the era in which he played, kind of like McGwire’s career needs to be judged from the vantage point of being in an era when everybody was roided up (He’d have my HOF vote, if I had one).
Hrbek wouldn’t have my vote, but if there were a Hall-of-Pretty-Good, that’d be another story. He was an above-average bat and glove for a long period of time. I’d even argue that Hrbek did something that neither Puckett, Killebrew, Carew or Oliva did—he may have saved the franchise. In 1984, there was a very real possibility of then owner Calvin Griffith moving the club to Florida. If the team wasn’t in first place for most of the summer, it may have worked out that way. Where would that team have been without Hrbek’s bat in the middle of the line-up? It’s also a question that can be put in most years between 1982 and 1994. Yeah, he’s not a Hall-of-Famer. But his number is retired for good reason.
Twins’ Top Players Community Ranking Project results:
1.Harmon Killebrew
2. Kirby Puckett
3. Rod Carew
4. Tony Oliva
5, Kent Hrbek
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There are several absolute things you can say about Tony Oliva’s career. He’s a three-time AL Batting Champion. He led the AL in doubles four times. Four players have led the American League in hits four three straight years—Ty Cobb, Kirby Puckett, Ichiro Suzuki and Tony Oliva. The mid-60s to early-70s was not a good time to be a hitter. The pitcher’s mound was two inches higher at the time, giving every pitcher more leverage and making them that much tougher to hit. Olivia was a career .304 hitter in that era in an era where the mean batting average for the American League was around .240 (dipping as low as .230 in 1968). Oliva was about as far over the league norm in terms of batting average as Tony Gywnn and Wade Boggs were in the 80s. For a period of seven years between 1964 and 1971, Oliva was one of the most dominating hitters in the American League.
There are also several things about Tony Oliva that are still shaded in mystery. It’s hard to say if he played a role in the implementation of the DH Rule in the American League. We don’t even know really whether he was born in 1938, 1940 or 1941. But most of these questions pale in comparison to the big question: Is he Hall-of-Fame worthy or not?
A few years ago, a certain Twins blogger known for his “analysis” gave Tony Oliva’s campaign a resounding thumbs down. It’s a fair enough dig at Oliva, I suppose. But I thought it fell short for two reasons. One, it fails to take defense into account (odd considering how vocal this certain blogger has been in his support of Carlos Gomez, lately). It’s fine to say Dick Allen was a much better hitter than Oliva, but at a certain point the fact that Dick Allen’s defensive resume makes Delmon Young look like a Gold Glover has to enter the discussion. Second, getting into the Hall of Fame isn’t a pure statistical one. The Hall of Fame sets up its criteria as this:
5. Voting: Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.
Even Bill James, godfather of Sabermetrics, has called Allen a “cancer.” Imagine where sports writers who don’t believe that team chemistry is a myth will fall on the subject.
In reality, a better Hall of Fame article would be to compare Oliva to a player who made his way to Cooperstown on his own merit, and not at a point in time where the Veteran’s Committee was just putting old drinking buddies in. Fortunately, you don’t have to look that far back in time. On August 1, Jim Rice will be inducted into the Hall of Fame. There’s kind of an interesting analogy between him and Oliva, since both were significantly slowed down in their mid-30s by knee injuries. How do Rice and Oliva compare? Let’s measure the tape.
Career Overall statistics
Rice accumulated a little more than 2,000 plate appearances than Oliva in his career, which in conjunction with the fact that Oliva played in a much more pitcher friendly era account for most of the differences in counting stats. The rate stats, however, are fairly even across the board. Let’s now switch to take a look at the two players in their five best seasons, in terms of OPS+.
Oliva
1971: Age 32 (29)—.337 BA, 22 HRs, .915 OPS, 154 OPS+
1964: Age 25 (22)—.323 BA, 32 HRs, .916 OPS, 150 OPS+
1968: Age 29 (26)—.289 BA, 18 HRs, .833 OPS, 144 OPS+ (The year Bob Gibson had a 1.12 ERA)
1965: Age 26 (23)—.321 BA, 16 HR, 870 OPS, 141 OPS+
1970: Age 31 (28)—.327 BA, 23 HRs, .878 OPS. 137 OPS+
Rice had slightly better numbers toward the top and the bottom part evens out. Rice’s next best unlisted mark is a 127 OPS+ as a 22 year old in 1975. Oliva posted 136, 133 and 130 OPS+ totals in 1966, 1969 and 1967. In terms of career EQA, which unlike OPS+ weighs overall offensive contributions, Rice sits at .293, Oliva at .292. There are differences between the two. Rice put the ball over the fence more often (and as Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux taught us a decade ago, chicks dig the long ball), where as Oliva relied more on doubles and triples to provide his slugging percentage. But in terms of peak years, the two are very similar. Now for the big question, what about defense?
Rice spent most of his career in left field. He never had much range and let a lot of balls drop, but he could read a carom off the Green Monster like nobody’s business and had the arm to cut down runners who got caught up in no man’s land (sort of the late 70s equivalent of Michael Cuddyer, if you will). Oliva, on the other hand, had a strong defensive reputation. He won a Gold Glove in 1966, and might have won more if Outfield Gold Gloves weren’t biased toward center fielders and a token corner outfielder. Defensive metrics are usually spotty, and even more so for players from that era. But Oliva currently sits at 110 runs above average. Rice sits at 30 runs below average. Looking at a BP stat that includes defense, WARP2, Rice sits at 52.9, Oliva at 52.8. In layman’s terms, Oliva’s defensive advantage cancels out the 2,000 or so extra plate appearances that Rice has on Oliva.
Does this do anything to take Tony Oliva off the Hall-of-Fame borderline? Probably not. In fact, I was kind of surprised when Jim Rice made it in given he was statistically on the borderline and his personality didn’t win him any points. But if Rice can receive 75% of the vote, well, it means that the Hall of Fame Veteran Committee should take a closer look at Tony Oliva when they meet again in December.
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The Unofficial BABIP king
Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last few years, you’ve seen the burgeoning Sabermetrical movement take off in baseball. The current stat du jour making the rounds is called Batting Average on Balls in Play, better known as BABIP. The goal is to guesstimate what a player’s batting average will be in any given year. One has to imagine that a player like Rod Carew would thumb his nose at such a statistic.
If BABIP is truly all about getting lucky, then Rod Carew was the 1970s baseball equivalent of Charlie Sheen, roofie-ing baseballs like crazy so that he could take advantage of them during at-bats. Rare is the player who can make the Hall-of-Fame in the modern era with a career isolated slugging percentage a hair over .100, especially when you combine bad defense into the equation. Carew, however, had two things going for him. First, he was fast. His footwork was never the greatest and that limited his range in the field. But outside of Chuck Knoblauch, there was no better base thief in franchise history. He relished stealing bases, especially home plate which he swiped 17 times during his career. In 1969 alone, Carew stole home 7 times, tying an MLB record.
What truly set Carew apart though was his ability to seemingly hit the ball wherever he wanted to. ““He has an uncanny ability to move the ball around as if the bat were some kind of magic wand,” Yankees and A’s pitcher Ken Holtzman. Carew simply subscribed to the age old philosophy of hit ‘em where they ain’t. ““I get a kick out of watching a team defense me,” Carew told a New York newspaper in 1979. “A player moves two steps in one direction and I hit it two steps the other way. It goes right by his glove and I laugh.”
Carew, and his modern equivalent Ichiro Suzuki, would have driven modern day seamheads nuts today. He didn’t really hit line drives. But he dropped bunts. He put the ball just out of the defender’s reach. He did whatever it took just to get a hit. His 1977 MVP year remains his best years. Carew’s BABIP that season was .408, the second highest total in baseball history. 1977 seamheads might have said that the season was “unsustainable,” but then again that was Carew’s entire career. His .360 career BABIP is one of the higher totals you’ll see.
Signed in 1964 for a $5,000, Carew became a part of the Twins organization after a tryout in Yankee Stadium that then Twins manager stopped because he was afraid New York would offer him more money. Carew made quick work of the minor leagues, becoming the Twins’ starting second baseman in 1967. He held the position until moving to first base in September, 1975. He played three seasons at first for the Twins before his outrage over racist remarks made by then Twins owner Cal Griffith made him request a trade. He was traded to the then California Angels for a package that brought back one of the worst All-Stars ever in Dave Engle, two of the worst pitchers in Twins history in Brad Havens and Paul Hartzell, and Ken Landreaux, who had a couple of okay years before being shipped to the Dodgers for Mickey Hatcher. Carew stayed in Anaheim until 1985, picking up his 3,000th hit against Frank Viola. After the 1985 season, no major league teams offered Carew, a free agent, a contract. Carew sued Major League Baseball for collusion and won a settlement of more than $700,000. The Twins offered to bring him back for a farewell tour in 1986, but Carew declined.
After a career of accumulating hits in seeming defiance of BABIP, Carew remained a part of pop culture with his name being referenced in Adam Sandler’s Chanukah Song (ironically, since Carew only married a Jewish woman but never converted) and this Beastie Boys song, which seems as good a place as any to end on:
Twins’ Top Players Community Ranking Project results:
1. Harmon Killebrew
2. Kirby Puckett
3. Rod Carew
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I spent my pre-teen and teenage years in a part of the country where Bash Brothers and Will Clark posters were much more common than the Kirby Puckett one I had in my room. Given this was also a time where the Twins and A’s were developing something of a rivalry, being a “Twins fan” in the Bay Area became a part of my identity.
A good percentage of rivalries are one-sided ones. For every Twins/White Sox rivalry, there’s a Twins/Tigers rivalry, where the Twins side of the faction don’t really know it’s a rivalry, but the Tigers side may never forget the ghosts of 1987 and 2006. In many ways, this is the way A’s fans feel about the Twins. Twins fans ages 25 and up will never really forget Eric Fox’s three-run shot that deflated the tires in the Twins drive to repeat in 1992, and have a fair amount of malice toward the franchise. A’s fans don’t really despise the Twins in general. They know that there teams from 1988 through 1992 were generally superior. They had baseball’s greatest leadoff man and closer on the same roster through most of the run. They had baseball’s first 40/40 club member, the guy who still holds the record for most homeruns by a rookie and went on to hit more than 500 more after that, and a rotation filled with potential All-Star game starters. In four out of the five years in question, this team won more games than any Twins team of the era. This was a team that had seemingly better than the Twins in every way. Except in centerfield and World Series titles. Which may explain the number of copies of “The Secret Life of Kirby Puckett” issue of Sports Illustrated that were sent to me by high school classmates a decade after the fact.
It’s hard to use statistics to define Kirby Puckett’s greatness, so please forgive me for not going all OPS+ in this piece. It’s easy to forget that although Puckett was the same age as Kent Hrbek, Frank Viola and the rest of the famed Twins Rookie Class of 1982, he didn’t get his first major league at bat until two years later at the age of 24. He took his last at-bat eleven years and three months later in 1995. Most Hall-of-Fame resumes are built by getting a start in your early 20s and playing the game until your late 30s/early 40s. Ken Griffey Jr., the man who replaced Puckett as the “Best Centerfielder in the Game” in the 90s is a prime example of this kind of career. He started at 19 and is now winding down at 39. In the 21 seasons in between, Griffey has managed 2726 hits, a little more than 400 more than Puckett managed in 12 seasons. Puckett’s numbers definitely aren’t bad for a kid who only got into college baseball because he was laid off from a Ford Manufacturing plant.
Puckett didn’t really draw walks, and the general rule of thumb these days is that free swingers are bad. But the two things he did that made him great were that it didn’t matter what pitch you threw him, Puckett would hit it hard, and wherever you hit the ball, Puckett would catch it. It will never really be known what kind of an impact Puckett had defensively. All the fun numbers and data that have led to better defensive statistics are the product of the last couple of years. It’s hard to look back and say exactly how many times he jumped against the tarp and took a homerun away. Did he decline quickly defensively in his 30s? Sure. But then again so did Ken Griffey Jr. So did Torii Hunter in fact. Where the 31-year old Hunter was diving (and missing) for a Mark Kotsay line drive that wound up being an inside-the-park homerun, the 31-year old Puckett still had the ability to trek all the way to the plexiglass to take a double away from Ron Gant in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series (and to set the stage for his career-defining moment in the 13th).
It’s easy to point at Kirby Puckett’s negatives, but the interesting fact about him is how he succeeded in spite of all of these knocks. From a sabermetrical position, an avowed free swinger like Puckett should have put up numbers more like Carlos Gomez, especially in Puckett’s early years before his power developed. Yet somehow, no matter where the pitch was thrown he managed to hit it hard, never hitting less than .288 in any one season. From a scouting position, there’s no way a player whose body shape could best as bowling ball-esq should have that kind of range in centerfield. And yet Puckett defied those odds again. You hear about minor league prospects being compared to just about every other successful baseball player, yet rarely is anyone compared to Kirby Puckett. Players probably shouldn’t succeed playing the game the way Puckett did. That he did is a testament to what a phenomenal talent Puckett was.
The simple fact is that the Twins of the late 80s and early 90s were far from being great teams. From top to bottom, they didn’t instill fear into other teams the way the A’s of the same period or even the Twins of the mid 60s did. The World Championships that the team won were done so on such a thin line, that it’s fair game to argue that either would be won if you swapped out Puckett with say A’s centerfielder of the time period Dave Henderson, who wasn’t a bad player in his own right. There are not many other players on those Twins teams that you can say that about, with the possible exceptions of Frank Viola, Jack Morris and some of the pitchers. And that those teams won more championships than the much more talent-laden A’s teams from the same time period, well, maybe that’s why my A’s-fan friends hated him so much.
Twins’ Top Players Community Ranking Project results:
1. Harmon Killebrew
2. Kirby Puckett
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Community Twins Player Rankings: #1 Harmon Killebrew
The swing that launched a thousand logos…and 573 homeruns
Three interesting facts about Harmon Killebrew:
1. Killebrew is far and away baseball’s premier Mormon slugger, with 573 homeruns. Dale Murphy is second at 398 and Jeff Kent is third at 377. The active leader, Bobby Crosby , is light years away at 58, so it looks like Killebrew will hold this mark for years to come. (The Twins probably have had more of an impact from players of the LDS faith than any other team, with Rick Aguilera and Jack Morris both being BYU alums and firm believers in the Book of Mormon.)
2. At the Mall of America, there are only two clues inside that let you know that Metropolitan Stadium once stood on the same site. First is a marker that lets you know where home plate is. Second, are two seats painted red, hanging in the air about 520 feet from home plate. These chairs denote the longest homerun hit at old Met Stadium off the bat of one Harmon Killebrew.
3. Everyone knows that Jerry West is the player silhouetted in the NBA logo. Who is the player shown in the MLB logo? Urban legend states that it’s Harmon Killebrew.
ESPN.com recently ran an article that attempted to debunk this myth. In the end, the designer stated that the piece was a composite of several photographs, and doesn’t know if Killebrew’s was one of those used. So the answer is that we’ll never know the true answer. We can, however, verify the source of the rumor. It comes from Killebrew himself. Stealing a quote from the same article:
“I was in the commissioner’s office one day in the late 1960s. I can’t remember the specifics, but I think it had something to do with a litho they were doing for the National Kidney Foundation. Anyway, I walked through the back part of the office, and there was a man sitting at a table. He had a photograph of me in a hitting position, and he had one of those grease pencils that you see at a newspaper, and he was marking that thing up. I said, ‘What are you doing with that?’ and he said they were going to make a new Major League Baseball logo. I never thought any more about it. And then the logo came out and it did look like me. The only change was the angle of the bat—they changed that to kind of make it fit more into the design.”
The article also revealed that Killebrew was the model in another MLB logo, the one used by the MLB Player Alumni Association. Which is nice, but it’s not the main Major League Baseball logo. There’s no way of knowing what the truth is. And the reality is that defeats the purpose of the logo. Much like the iPod commercials of today, the purpose of leaving a blank space in a logo is to give the next kid out there the chance that it’s him.
However, it would make sense at the time if it was Killebrew being used. In 1969, when the new MLB logo was released, it was Killebrew, not Hank Aaron, considered to have the best chance of passing Babe Ruth’s 714 homerun. Injuries during some of his prime years (1960, 1965 and 1968) and a career that went into a tailspin after his age-35 season in 1971. When healthy though between 1959 and 1971, he was about as close to a mortal lock for 40 homeruns as possible—especially impressive in baseball’s second dead ball era where 30 was a major accomplishment and 20+ homers were usually good enough to get you ranked in the AL top ten. Killebrew was also known for his patient approach at the plate and his career .373 OBP is very impressive.
Killebrew wasn’t without his nits though as a player, defense being the prime concern. He came up as a second baseman, then moved to third, left, first, back to third before finally settling in and becoming a decent defensive first baseman. The other major nit against Killebrew was his batting average. Killebrew’s .256 career mark is ahead of only light-hitting Chicago White Sox catcher Ray Schalk among HOF position players. These two factors played a key factor in keeping Killebrew out of the Hall of Fame on his first three ballots, receiving 59.6%, 59.3% and 71.9% before finally crossing the required 75% (83.1%, to be precise) in 1984.
Killebrew’s contributions to Twins’ baseball are undeniable though. Of the top ten season homerun totals in franchise history, he holds 9 of the marks (with Roy Sievers holding 7th place and being tied for 10th), along with the franchise high total for career slugging percentage. He and Eddie Yost, the man he replaced at third base, are the only names on the franchise’s all-time single season walk leaderboard, as well. Killebrew is far and away the Twins’ leading all-time slugger, and a fine choice for the top-player in franchise history.
And, to be featured in any logo that baseball has to offer.
Twins’ Top Players Community Ranking Project results:
1. Harmon Killebrew
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