Minnesota Twins Joe Mauer is among top five players in franchise history

MINNEAPOLIS, MN- SEPTEMBER 30: Joe Mauer #7 of the Minnesota Twins looks on and acknowledges the fans after catching against the Chicago White Sox on September 30, 2018 at Target Field in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Twins defeated the White Sox 5-4. (Photo by Brace Hemmelgarn/Minnesota Twins/Getty Images)
MINNEAPOLIS, MN- SEPTEMBER 30: Joe Mauer #7 of the Minnesota Twins looks on and acknowledges the fans after catching against the Chicago White Sox on September 30, 2018 at Target Field in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Twins defeated the White Sox 5-4. (Photo by Brace Hemmelgarn/Minnesota Twins/Getty Images)
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(Photo by Brace Hemmelgarn/Minnesota Twins/Getty Images)
(Photo by Brace Hemmelgarn/Minnesota Twins/Getty Images) /

Minnesota Twins icon Joe Mauer retired recently and will take his place among the top five players in franchise history.

If there was ever a player who seemed destined to play for a single MLB franchise his entire career, it was Joe Mauer. He was born in St. Paul, excelled in three sports at St. Paul’s Cretin-Derham Hall High School, which included being selected as the USA Today High School Player of the Year in baseball and football. Then he was drafted with the first overall pick by the Minnesota Twins in the 2001 June Amateur Draft.

Mauer quickly became the sideburned face of the Twins and the best catcher in baseball. He led the league in batting average three times in his first five full seasons. In 2009, he was the AL MVP. You couldn’t think of the Minnesota Twins without thinking of Joe Mauer. He was a Minnesotan through and through.

Following his ninth major league season, Mauer married Maddie Bisanz, who was, fittingly, a fellow graduate of Cretin-Derham Hall High School and a nurse in St. Paul. In 2012, they bought a house in Sunfish Lake, Minnesota and a year later welcomed twin daughters into their Minnesota world. If 12-year-old Joe Mauer sat down one day and wrote the story of how he would like his life to play out, he probably couldn’t have written a better story than the one he actually lived.

Joe Mauer’s 15-year career with the Minnesota Twins came to an end with his retirement announcement on Friday. It wasn’t entirely unexpected. Mauer’s eight-year contract with the Twins ended with the 2018 season. He was a free agent, but where else but Minnesota could he play? His final game was a lovefest with the fans and included one last stint behind the plate, a position he hadn’t played since 2013 because of concussion problems.

Concussions played a primary role in Mauer’s retirement at the age of 35 after having a season in which he was nearly league average as a hitter. In his retirement letter to Minnesota Twins fans, he wrote, “After my concussion this season I found myself wondering about ‘what if’ situations. If I were to continue playing this game I would want to do so without reservation and I no longer feel that is possible. There is a part of me that will always want to compete, but I have reached a point where my desire to play is outweighed by the possibility of another injury.”

With Mauer’s retirement, I thought it would be nice to look back at some of the other all-time greats in Minnesota Twins history and see where Mauer lands on the team’s Mount Rushmore (plus one). I should note that you won’t find any Washington Senators here.

With apologies to Walter Johnson and Joe Judge, this is Minnesota’s time to shine. Well, that’s not entirely true. One player did spend the first part of his career with the Senators before becoming a Twin. He’s the exception that proves the rule. Here are my picks for the top five players in the history of the Minnesota Twins.

(Photo by Robert Beck/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
(Photo by Robert Beck/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) /

5. Puck

Center fielder Kirby Puckett
12 years with the Twins, 1984—1995
.318/.360/.477, 123 wRC+, 44.9 fWAR, 51.1 bWAR
fWAR=Fangraphs WAR
bWAR=Baseball-Reference WAR

Kirby Puckett had an entirely different life growing up than the life Joe Mauer had in St. Paul. Puckett grew up in the projects of South Chicago, as one of nine children. He played on asphalt and hard dirt fields with kids who lived nearby, some of whom would be lured into drugs and crime. Few scouts ventured to his neighborhood, so he wasn’t noticed by big colleges or any professional teams in high school. He received one offer to play baseball at Miami Dade North Junior College in Florida, but turned it down because he didn’t want to be that far from home.

Puckett went to work at a Ford plant, but it didn’t last long. After he lost his job, he attended an MLB tryout camp in Chicago, which led to a scholarship offer to play at Bradley University in Illinois. This was the break he needed. While playing for Bradley, Puckett was noticed by a Twins scout. They drafted him with the third overall pick of the 1982 June Draft-Regular Phase.

Two years later, Puckett was in the big leagues. At Baseball-Reference, he’s listed at five-foot-eight and 178 pounds, but in his prime he looked like he weighed closer to 225. His fireplug build was reminiscent of a former Houston Astros power hitter, Jimmy Wynn, nicknamed “The Toy Cannon.”

Despite his powerful lower body, Puckett slugged under .400 and hit just four home runs in his first two major league seasons. He looked like he would be a high-average, low-power type hitter who could steal 15-20 bases a year. Then came the 1986 season that saw Puckett bust out with 119 runs scored, 31 homers and 96 RBI.

During spring training before that 1986 season, Puckett was having lunch with Bob Costas, who mentioned that his wife was pregnant but they hadn’t decided on a name yet. Puckett suggested Costas name his child Kirby. Costas said, “I’ll tell you what. If you’re hitting .350 by the time this baby is born, we’ll name him or her after you.”

When the baby was born, Puckett was hitting .372. Costas’ wife didn’t want to name the baby Kirby, so he was named Keith but with two middle names: Keith Michael Kirby Costas. Keith Costas is now a producer for the show “MLB Central” on the MLB Network.

Puckett’s 1986 season was the first of 10 straight all-star seasons. He also finished in the top seven in AL MVP voting seven times and won six Gold Gloves and six Silver Slugger Awards.

In addition to his excellent play during the regular season, Puckett impressed in the postseason. He was a key part of the Minnesota Twins team that went from a 71-91 record in 1986 to the franchise’s first World Series title in 1987. Four years later, history repeated itself when the Twins went from a 74-88 season in 1990 to another World Series championship in 1991.

Puckett’s signature moment as a Minnesota Twin came in the bottom of the 11th inning of Game 6 of the 1991 World Series. With the score tied at three, he hit a game-winning home run off Charlie Liebrant to force a Game 7. The Twins won the title the next night when Jack Morris outdueled John Smoltz in a 1-0 victory. The winning run scored in the bottom of the 10th on a Gene Larkin single after Puckett and Kent Hrbek had been intentionally walked.

The end to Puckett’s career came all too quickly. Late in the 1995 season, he was hit in the face by a Dennis Martinez fastball. The next spring, he started having trouble with his vision. He hoped it would go away, but it never did and his career was over because of glaucoma.

Puckett was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 2001. He was joined by another player well-known around Minnesota, Dave Winfield, who was born in St. Paul. Cooperstown was overrun with Minnesotans that year.

Sadly, the Puckett story ends not with triumph but with tragedy. The player so many fans and teammates had loved for many years turned out to be a rotten person. In the years after his Hall of Fame induction, word came out that Puckett had been frequently abusive to his wife and had a longtime mistress who would eventually seek a protective order against him. She wasn’t his only mistress; there were many.

This was a guy who had received the Branch Rickey Award and the Roberto Clemente Man of the Year Award. The Clemente Award is one of baseball’s highest honors. Puckett was also a member of the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame. He was beloved.

Frank Deford wrote about Puckett in a 2003 article for Sports Illustrated. In it, he details the downfall of Puckett after his career ended. It’s a chilling read. In the first paragraph of that piece, Deford writes, “On the other hand, what a price did fans pay to lose their dear illusions. You see, when the hero falls, maybe the hero worshipers fall harder. After all, Puckett always knew who he was . . . It was all the other folks who decided he must be someone else, something more. Yeah, the lovable little Puck was living a lie, but whose lie was it in the final analysis?”

(Photo by Ron Vesely/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
(Photo by Ron Vesely/MLB Photos via Getty Images) /

Number 4—Circle Me Bert

Starting Pitcher Bert Blyleven

11 years with the Twins, 1970-1976, 1985-1988

3.28 ERA, 3.15 FIP, 55.7 fWAR, 49.4 bWAR

fWAR=Fangraphs WAR

bWAR=Baseball-Reference WAR

When Bert Blyleven was born in Zeist, Netherlands, in 1951, the Minnesota Twins were still the Washington Senators. Blyleven’s family moved to Canada three years later before eventually settling in California. It was at Santiago High School in Golden Grove that Blyleven was discovered by a Minnesota Twins scout. The team drafted him in the third round of the 1969 MLB June Amateur Draft.

One year later, after a couple dozen starts in the minor leagues, Blyleven was pitching for the Minnesota Twins. Despite being one of the best pitchers in baseball in the 1970s, Blyleven didn’t get the recognition he deserved. He only made one all-star team in the decade and only earned Cy Young votes one time during this stretch.

Those were the days before analytics, when a pitcher’s win-loss record had an outsized effect on how he was viewed. A typical Blyleven season would be 16-15 or 17-17 or 14-12. He won 287 games in his career, but only hit the 20-win mark once, when he was 20-17 in 1973. He was a terrific pitcher who regularly pitched for mediocre (or worse) teams, so his win-loss record didn’t do him justice.

In his first six seasons with the Twins, Blyleven averaged 16 wins and 14 losses, despite a 2.78 ERA that was 33 percent better than league average. According to Fangraphs WAR, only one pitcher, Tom Seaver, was more valuable than Blyleven in the 1970s. He provided more value than Gaylord Perry, Fergie Jenkins, Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan and Jim Palmer, among many others. He belonged in the conversation with those guys, but was often left out.

Off the field, the relationship between Blyleven and the Twins started to go south in 1975. After losing a contentious salary arbitration, he missed time with an injury during the season. He came back strong and had another very good year, but was fed up with the Twins and asked to be traded. His request was denied that offseason.

In 1976, the team brought in Gene Mauch to manage and things got worse. Mauch didn’t like how outspoken Blyleven was and rode him hard. Off the field, the MLBPA had challenging the reserve clause, which had existed for over a century. Arbitrator Peter Seitz’ ruling in December meant free agency, so Blyleven was among a group of players who decided to play out their options to become free agents.

Trade rumors swirled around Blyleven during the first two months of the 1976 season. It all came to a head on May 31. After pitching the top of the ninth inning, he walked off the mound with the hometown fans booing and jeering him. He let loose with an obscene gesture that would result in a fine and a forced public apology. The Twins traded him away the next day in a six-player deal that included Roy Smalley and $250,000 coming back to the Minnesota. It was not a glorious end to his time with the Twins.

After one-and-a-half seasons with the Texas Rangers, he was part of an even bigger trade that included four teams. When the dust settled, Blyleven ended up in Pittsburgh where he would help the 1979 “We R Fam-A-Lee” Pirates win the World Series. He had one win in the NLCS against the Reds and another against the Baltimore Orioles in the Fall Classic. That was the highlight of his time with the Pirates. The following season in Pittsburgh was unpleasant for Blyleven, his teammates, his manager and the fans.

His next stop was in Cleveland, where he spent four full seasons and part of a fifth. In 1985, he was traded back to Minnesota. Splitting that season between the Tribe and the Twins, Blyleven led the league with 37 starts, 24 complete games, five shutouts and 293.7 innings. He was an all-star for the second time and finished third in AL Cy Young voting behind Bret Saberhagen and Ron Guidry.

Blyleven’s final two seasons with the Twins came in 1986 and 1987 and they were a mixed bag of impressive endurance and home run problems. He led the league in innings pitched in 1986, but allowed 50 dingers, which also led the league. He led the league in long balls allowed again in 1987, when 46 big flies sailed out of the park against him. Pitching in the Metrodome didn’t help. He allowed 56 of those 96 round-trippers at home.

Despite the frequent dingers, he was an above average pitcher and an important part of the 1987 World Series championship squad. The best starting pitcher on the 1987 Minnesota Twins was Frank Viola, but Bert Blyleven was a strong number two. The two hurlers averaged nearly 260 innings each and combined to throw 15 complete games. Blyleven won two of the four games the Twins won in their ALCS victory over the Detroit Tigers.

He followed that up with a victory in Game 2 of the World Series, then had another strong outing in the team’s Game 5 loss. They ended up winning the series in seven games for the first World Series title since the team moved from Washington to Minnesota in 1961.

Blyleven pitched one final season with the Twins in 1988, then three with the California Angels. He deserves his spot on this top five list for his success on the diamond as a member of the Minnesota Twins, but he also gets extra credit for being the team’s color commentator since 1996. He’s known for a brash style and unabashed fandom, which includes his signature, “Circle Me Bert” use of the telestrator to circle sign-holding fans.

Befitting one of the team’s all-time great players, Blyleven was elected to the Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame in 2002 and had his number 28 retired in 2011. When he made the Baseball Hall of Fame in his 14th year on the ballot in 2011, he chose to have a Twins cap on his Hall of Fame plaque.

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – SEPTEMBER 11:  (Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images)
MINNEAPOLIS, MN – SEPTEMBER 11:  (Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images) /

Number 3—Just Joe

Catcher/First baseman Joe Mauer

15 years with the Twins, 2004—2018

.306/.388/.439, 122 wRC+, 49.2 fWAR, 55.1 bWAR

fWAR=Fangraphs WAR

bWAR=Baseball-Reference WAR

Long before he reached the major leagues, Joe Mauer was a Paul Bunyan-esque legend in Minnesota. As the story goes, he hit the ball so hard in T-ball that he was asked to leave the league. He famously only struck out once during the four years he played in high school. He remembered that strike out, saying, “It was junior year, and it was in the state tournament. I came back to the bench and everybody thought something was wrong with me.”

Along with hitting over .500 every year of high school, he hit .605 his senior year and once hit home runs in seven consecutive games. As the catcher for the Team USA Junior National Team, he hit .595 in 2000. Joe Mauer playing baseball in high school was like Bo Jackson playing football in Tecmo Bowl, just unstoppable.

Speaking of football, Mauer was pretty good at that also. He completed 66 percent of his passes during his senior year, with 41 touchdowns against just five interceptions. His play on the gridiron earned him Gatorade National Player of the Year honors, along with being named to the USA Today All-USA high school football team. The National Quarterback Club named him National High School Quarterback of the Year in 2000.

Of course, that was all before he joined the Twins. After being drafted with the first overall pick of the 2001 draft, he moved through the minor leagues and made his major league debut in 2004. Injuries limited him to 35 games that year, but he would become a fixture in the lineup in 2005.

The 2006 season was Mauer’s breakout year. He became the first catcher in American League history to lead the league in batting average when he hit .347, with a .429 on-base percentage and .507 slugging percentage. This was also the first of six all-star seasons and the first of five Silver Slugger Awards.

Mauer led the league in batting average twice more, becoming the only catcher to ever lead the league in average three times. His 2009 season was the stuff of legend. As a Gold Glove-winning catcher, he hit .365/.444/.587. All three marks led the AL. He was the first catcher ever to achieve this feat and the first AL player since George Brett to accomplish it. He also launched a career-high 28 dongs and drove in 96 runs and was named the AL MVP.

The 2009 season was peak Joe Mauer. He would never have a season like it again. In 2010, he started to struggle with injuries. He still played 137 games and was among the best players in the league, but the injuries would be a sign of things to come. In 2011, he was limited to 82 games because of various ailments.

The 2012 season was a bounce back year for Mauer. He played in 147 games and hit .319/.416/.446. It wasn’t as good as that amazing 2009 season, but it was still impressive production from a catcher. In August that year, he broke the record for games caught by a Twins catcher, previously held by Earl Battey.

Unfortunately, the catching position would become a thing of the past for Mauer. His 2013 season was limited to 113 games because of a concussion he wasn’t able to come back from. He shifted to first base for good in 2014 and played there during his final five seasons in the big leagues.

Mauer’s career can be split between his years at catcher and his years at first base. In 10 years at catcher, he hit .323/.405/.468 and was worth 4.5 WAR per season. In his five years as a first baseman, he hit .278/.359/.388 and was worth 2.1 WAR per season. He was part of four Minnesota Twins teams that made the playoffs, but the first three lost in the ALDS and the fourth lost in the AL Wild Card game.

Five years from now, Mauer will be on the Hall of Fame ballot. He ranks as the 12th-best catcher based on Fangraphs WAR. Based on Jay Jaffe’s JAWS metric, which combines career value and peak value, he’s seventh among catchers. This places him above the average catcher in the Hall of Fame. Hopefully, the voters will agree and Mauer will someday have a Hall of Fame plaque with a Twins cap in the museum in Cooperstown.

CIRCA 1974: (Photo by: 1974 SPX/Diamond Images via Getty Images)
CIRCA 1974: (Photo by: 1974 SPX/Diamond Images via Getty Images) /

Number 2—The Batting Champ

Second baseman Rod Carew

12 years with the Twins, 1967-1978

.328/.393/.429, 132 wRC+, 56.9 fWAR, 63.8 bWAR

fWAR=Fangraphs WAR

bWAR=Baseball-Reference WAR

As a teenager, Rod Carew was discovered by Herb Stein, a scout for the Twins, while playing on sandlots around New York. Stein noticed quickly that Carew had quick wrists that could slash line drives all over the field. The twins signed the young player in June 1964 and sent him to the Rookie League.

Three years later, Carew was in the major leagues playing his first game against the Baltimore Orioles. He singled his first time up and had another hit later in the game. He was an All-Star that summer and won the AL Rookie of the Year Award that fall.

Carew was just getting started. He would be an All-Star 18 times in his career and add an AL MVP Award to his Rookie of the Year Award. Seven times he led the league in batting average and four times he led in on-base percentage. He had 200 hits in a season four times and 3,053 hits in his career. Few hitters in the history of the game could hit line drives as consistently as Carew.

Early in his career with the Minnesota Twins, Carew was managed by Billy Martin, who loved to be daring on the basepaths. In 1969, he stole home seven times. That was also the first time he led the league in batting average. The Twins made the playoffs that year, but were swept by the Baltimore Orioles.

The Twins made the playoffs again in 1970 and were again swept by the Orioles. Carew hit .366 during the regular season, but in just 51 games because he suffered a nasty injury when he was taken out at second base by Brewers first baseman Mike Hegan. It’s a play that was routine in baseball for many years but has become outlawed in today’s game. Carew returned from the injury in September as a pinch-hitter and had two at-bats in the playoff series against Baltimore.

The apex of Carew’s career with the Twins was the 1977 season. He got off to a nice start to the year, with a .356 batting average through the end of April. By the end of May, he was hitting .365, which wasn’t all that unusual for a guy who .hit .350 or better three straight years from 1973 to 1975.

June is when Carew really took off. In 28 games that month, he had 54 hits in 111 at-bats, for a batting line of .486/.538/.775. He cooled off a bit in early July, but was still hitting .394 at the All-Star break. Unfortunately, over his next 52 games after the break, he “only” hit .349, which caused his average to drop to .376 by mid-September. His shot to hit .400 was effectively over.

Carew didn’t go down without a fight, though. He went 31-for-63 in his last 16 games, a .492 batting average, and finished at .388. It was the highest batting average in the AL since the great Ted Williams himself hit .388 in 1957. The difference between hitting .400 and not hitting .400 was eight hits. Had eight more balls dropped in or snuck through, Carew would have done something no one has done since Williams hit .406 in 1941.

After one final season with the Twins, Carew was traded to the California Angels before the 1979 season. He played seven years with the Angels and still hit for a high average and got on base at an impressive clip, but didn’t have the slugging percentage he had as a younger player in Minnesota. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on his first ballot in 1991, along with two of the pitchers he regularly faced in his career, Gaylord Perry and Fergie Jenkins.

NEW YORK – CIRCA 1970: . (Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images)
NEW YORK – CIRCA 1970: . (Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images) /

Number 1—Killer

1B/3B/OF Harmon Killebrew

21 years with the Twins/Senators, 1954-1974

.256/.376/.509, 142 wRC+, 66.3 fWAR, 60.5 bWAR

fWAR=Fangraphs WAR

bWAR=Baseball-Reference WAR

Before the franchise moved from Washington to Minnesota, Harmon Killebrew played in parts of seven seasons with the Senators. He was just 18 when he made his major league debut and didn’t play much during his first five big league seasons. He finally broke out with a league-leading 42 home runs in 1959, then followed that up with 31 homers in 1960.

Older baseball fans may remember a TV show in 1960 called Home Run Derby that aired from January to July. It featured a head-to-head home run contest between some of the top sluggers in baseball at the time. Killebrew appeared on the show four times, beating Mickey Mantle and Rocky Colavito but losing to Ken Boyer and Willie Mays. It was the precursor to the Home Run Derby event held now on the day before the MLB All-Star Game.

The Senators moved to Minnesota before the 1961 season and Killebrew quickly became the franchise icon. He hosted a pregame show on WTCN-TV when the Twins were at home and a radio show in the offseason. On the field, he was launching home runs with regularity, leading the league five times as a Twin, including three straight years from 1962 to 1964.

In 1965, the Twins had their first great season in Minnesota. They won the AL pennant by seven games over the Chicago White Sox to advance to the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. The series went seven games, with the Twins losing Game 7 against Sandy Koufax, 2-0. In the series, Killebrew hit .286 with a .444 on-base percentage. The rest of the team hit .186 with a .237 OBP.

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The Twins finished second in the AL in each of the next two seasons, including the heart-breaking 1967 season when they finished a single game behind the “Impossible Dream” Boston Red Sox. Killebrew led the league with 44 home runs and 131 RBI that season, but finished second in AL MVP voting to Carl Yastrzemski, who carried the Red Sox to the AL pennant with one of the best seasons anyone’s ever had.

After a 7th place finish in 1968, when Killebrew was limited to 100 games because of a hamstring injury, the Twins made the newly-created best-of-five playoff series in 1969. During the regular season, Killebrew led the league in games played, home runs, RBI, walks, and on-base percentage, which was enough for him to win the AL MVP Award. The advanced numbers suggest the award should have gone to Rico Petrocelli or Reggie Jackson, but Jackson himself said at the time, “If Harmon Killebrew isn’t the league’s number-one player, I have never seen one.”

The Twins lost in the playoffs in 1969 and again in 1970, which was Killebrew’s last great season. He played four more years with the Twins and one final season with the Kansas City Royals in 1975. Late in his career, he had his number 3 retired. He finished with 573 career home runs, which was fifth all-time. He’s now 12th on the all-time list, between Marc McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro.

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In 1984, Killebrew was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his fourth year on the ballot. Joining him in Cooperstown were Luis Aparicio and Don Drysdale. Killebrew was the first Minnesota Twin to be inducted into the Hall and the top player in franchise history, at least in my book.

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