The Franchise Four is picking up steam across baseball and Major League Baseball has given us our first voting update. Hardball Talk has a nice little spreadsheet to look at of who the top four for each team. One of my favorite highlights is the fact that Nolan Ryan is on a list for three teams: Texas Rangers, Houston Astros and the Los Angeles Angels.
The results that we are interested in is, of course, the top vote getters thus far for the Minnesota Twins. Leading the voting is the logo himself, Harmon Killebrew. Running is second is Kirby Puckett. Third and fourth places belong to Rod Carew and Tony Oliva.
The others on the ballot are Bert Blyleven, Walter Johnson, Joe Mauer and Jim Kaat.
Other notes throughout a quick glance at the finalists:
Randy Johnson is the only other player to be on two teams’ Franchise Four being on the Arizona Diamondbacks and Seattle Mariners squads.
Pete Rose is in first for the Cincinnati Reds which is amazing and I hope he wins so Major League Baseball has to acknowledge that he does in fact exist.
Mike Trout currently sits in second for the Angels. Trout is a fantastic player and will probably be on the list, but there has to be more deserving Angels at the moment than Trout. He’ll get there, don’t get me wrong, but it seems premature.
The Tampa Bay Rays have not been around long enough. Seriously, I feel old seeing the names of Evan Longoria, David Price, James Shields and Ben Zobrist on the list of best ever players for a franchise.
The Twins here have a link for you to vote for the Franchise Four:
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