Minnesota Twins: Top 5 Switch-Hitters in Twins History

Jorge Polanco is in the midst of one of the best seasons by a Minnesota Twins switch-hitter ever. His 30 homers this season are the best in team history by a switch-hitter and his 4.2 fWAR leads the team. He easily will finish the year as the team’s MVP and will close out his eighth season as one of the top switch hitters in baseball.

Entering age 28, he’s also beginning to establish himself on the Twins’ all time lists. He’s currently 38th in offensive WAR, 42nd in batting average, 45th in doubles, 32nd in homers, and 36th in OPS. As his career continues, he’ll continue to move up the rankings, similar to how he’ll move up the ladder on our list of the greatest Twins shortstops.

This raises the question: where is Jorge Polanco on the list of the greatest Minnesota Twins switch-hitters ever?

The Twins don’t have a lengthy history of switch-hitters, with 67 of them from 1961-2015 and five more in the years since. To make this list more realistic, we’re going to exclude all hitters with less than 325 games played for Minnesota. If you played what amounts to two seasons for a team, you can’t really be counted among their greatest switch-hitters.

Because of this, Chili Davis, Luis Castillo, Bobby Kielty, and Ryan Doumit all aren’t included on this list. Davis and Castillo were the hardest to leave off and both will earn honorable mentions despite not having enough games, but two really good (or just really solid) years is not quite the same as three or more years for a team. With that in mind, we’ll start off with the honorable mentions.