Minnesota Twins: The Top Eight Starting Pitchers in Franchise History
By Otto Johnson
As the Minnesota Twins coming up on their 120th season, we look back at the five best starting pitchers in franchise history.
The Minnesota Twins are one of the oldest franchises in baseball, dating back to 1901, when they were the league bottom-dweller known as the Washington Senators. Since that time, the team has won three championships, six pennants, and eleven division titles.
It has also suffered through seven 100+ loss seasons, fourteen playoff defeats, and have lost over 1100 games to the New York Yankees. The team has had some really good seasons, and some really bad seasons. Throughout it all, there have been some excellent players who have carried the team.
These excellent players deserve some recognition , so Puckett’s Pond will be putting together a list of the top players at each position to get ready for the top 50 players of all time. In order to make it on this list, starting pitchers need to have thrown in over 200 games or 1,000 innings, start in more than half of your games, and have played an important role for the team.
This will be the only list that includes the top eight as opposed to the top five. Because there are so many starters in team history, there are also a whopping twelve honorable mentions. With that in mind, let’s get to it.
Minnesota Twins’ Honorable Mentions
This was the toughest list to put together, as the some of the greatest pitchers in league history have played for the Twins/Senators. Five Hall of Famers, including Early Winn, Lefty Gomez, Stan “Covey” Coveleski, Steve Carlton, and Jack Morris didn’t make the list due to a lack of innings. Leaving Morris of the list was the hardest exclusion due to his incredible 1991.
Along with Morris, several franchise icons also missed the list, with Kevin Tapani, Scott Erickson, Jack Kralick, Dean Chance, and Jim “Mudcat” Grant all missing the cut (Chance and Grant didn’t have the games). Only one Senator made the list, as “Grunting Jim” Shaw, Alvin “General” Crowder, and Emil “Dutch” Leonard also were only honorable mentions.