Puckett’s Pond faces off two notable Minnesota Twins players and you decide which one was greater
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Puckett’s Pond is enlisting your help in deciding who the greatest Minnesota Twins in history are at each position. Eventually we’ll square off each position against the others and wind up with the greatest Minnesota Twin, as selected by you. The first position we’ll be selecting is catcher. We’ll only be counting literal Minnesota Twins and not the pre-1961 Washington franchises. Players also will need 700 PAs as a Twin to qualify. We ask you to consider the player based solely on his time as a Twin and at the position specified.
Unsurprisingly, Joe Mauer has been voted by our readers as the greatest Minnesota Twins catcher. He received 71% of votes against Earl Battey. Battey gave Mauer the toughest fight out of Mauer’s three match ups. In the just for fun “consolation round,” Pierzynski bested Laudner in the closest catching match up yet. Pierzynski had 60% of votes.
With names like Battey, Brian Harper, Butch Wyneger, George Mitterwald, Pierzynski, Laudner, Borgmann, and of course our winner Joe Mauer, catcher has been a position of strength for the Twins over the years.
With the greatest catcher chosen, we move on to first base. As with catcher, we will have four first round match ups for a total of eight players. The candidates are: Harmon Killebrew, Kent Hrbek, Justin Morneau, Don Mincher, Doug Mientkiewicz, Craig Kusick, Ron Jackson and Rich Reese. Rod Carew spent significant time at first base but according to our criteria will be considered a second baseman—although a Carew/Killebrew match-up would have been very interesting.
Mincher will face Mientkiewicz, Reese goes against Jackson, Hrbek will face Morneau, and Kusick pairs up with Killebrew. This time we’ve tried to include some tougher decisions in the first round so that the votes aren’t blowouts. Perhaps it would be more logical to go with a seed-type system but probably less interesting as well.
Greatest Twins first baseman Match up #1 will coming soon.