As the Minnesota Twins come up on their 120th season, we finish our look back at the fifty best players in franchise history with No. 20 through No.1.
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 players deserved some recognition. When I started this project three weeks ago, I wanted to list the top fifty players in franchise history and go over the Top 5 at each position. With a top five list at each position completed, it’s time to finally get into the big one: The Top 50 Players in Franchise History.
In order to make this list the Twins player needed to appear on one of the Top 5 positional lists, pitch in at least 150 games or hit in at least four hundred (only one player did both), perform excellently on the diamond, and mean something to the franchise and it’s fans.
We finished the Honorable Mentions and the Last Ten In (No. 55-No. 41) yesterday, and we got through the All-Stars and the Twins Greats (No. 40-No.21) earlier today, leaving us with just the Top 20 players in team history left.
This was the hardest list to put together, with the Twins featuring some truly great players. Today’s list is broken down into three pieces: The Minnesota Twins Mount Rushmore (four players), The Top Ten (six players), and the All-Time Greats (ten players). With the end in sight, let’s get into it.