Minnesota Twins Opening Day Countdown: 58, Big Papi Twins HR
The Minnesota Twins are just 58 days away from opening day in Baltimore. As we near that day, we will tap into Twins history related to each number as we get closer!
The Minnesota Twins are preparing for a 2018 season with expectations after making the playoffs in 2017 as a Wild Card. We will have bring out numbers from team history that represent the number of days until opening day on March 29th in Baltimore.
David Ortiz is one of those players that many Twins fans see as “the one that got away”, but he really was a very different hitter when he was a Twin the player he became in Boston that could have him elected into the Hall of Fame.
Ortiz’s power production
With the Minnesota Twins, David Ortiz played 6 seasons, playing 455 games, with 1,693 plate appearances. In those plate appearances, he hit 108 doubles, 3 triples, and 58 home runs in 393 total hits with an overall line of .266/.348/.461.
Of course, many Twins fans remember Ortiz for the player he became in Boston, which left his overall career totals at 541 home runs, and a career .286/.380/.552 line, still leading the entire major leagues in slugging and OPS in his final season at age 40, hitting .315/.401/.620 in 2016’s finale season.
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With the Twins, Ortiz hit 43% of his hits for extra bases. The breakdown was 27.5% of his hits for doubles, 0.8% of his hits for triples, and 14.8% of his hits for home runs.
On pure plate appearances, 6.4% of his plate appearances resulted in a double while with the Twins, while 3.4% of his plate appearances resulted in a home run, nearly a 2-1 ratio of doubles to home runs.
With Boston, that ratio was nearly even. He hit 25.2% of his hits and 6.2% of his plate appearances for doubles, both numbers down a touch from his numbers with Minnesota. However, with 23.2% of his hits being home runs and 5.8% of all of his plate appearances resulting in a home run, he had nearly double the production of home runs per hit and per plate appearance with the Red Sox.
This also bears out overall, as 49.2% of his hits going for extra bases, up over 6% from his time with Minnesota. While Twins fans may lament losing Ortiz in the way he was lost, it is quite true that the work he did with
Red Sox hitting coach Ron Jackson drastically changed the course of Ortiz’s career, truly turning him into “Big Papi”.
Next: Who will be next in Twins team HOF?
As we get closer to opening day, we remember #58 by remembering that the guy we lost to Boston was not the Big Papi that he became!
We look forward to that first day of the season against Baltimore!