The All-time All-Minnesotan Team

I've recently been reading The New Bill James Historical Abstract, and at one point he offhandedly mentioned who would be on an all-time Oklahoma team. Naturally like most Minnesotans, this made me wonder who would be on an all-time Minnesota team. But unlike most Minnesotans, I actually sat down and tried to figure it out.

First I went to baseball-reference.com's bio search for all players who were born in Minnesota. I'm sure this presents a few problems, like players who were born out of state but were raised here, but it also presented me with an opportunity to claim Roger Maris, who only lived in Minnesota for like the first 8 years of his life. And anyway, it works good enough for my purposes.

Then I listed off all the position players from that list who had played at least 300 games at any given position, just to make the amount of names more manageable. I didn't want to do a ton of research here, so I made extensive use of Wins Above Replacement (WAR), looking at each player's average WAR per year, their WAR total for their peak 3 years, as well as their single season high. Then looking at all of this, I was able to create my all-time Minnesotan team.

Catcher: Joe Mauer (Twins; 2004-2014)

At this point in his career I guess whether or not Joe is a Hall of Famer is debatable, but whether or not he's the best Minnesota born catcher is not.

First Base: Kent Hrbek (Twins; 1981-1994)

I'll be honest, there were a couple positions I didn't even bother research. First base was one of them, although when I decided to add a DH to my team I did check some other options, and with a .282/.367/.481 career line he definitely warranted my belief in him.

Second Base: Jack Crooks (Colts, Browns, Senators & Colonels; 1889-1898)
Third Base: Paul Molitor (Brewers, Blue Jays & Twins; 1978-1998)
Shortstop: Gene DeMontreville (Pirates, Senators, Orioles, Orphans, Superbas, Beaneaters & Browns; 1894-1904)

Molitor is a Hall of Famer. He was a shoe in for this team, the question was what position would he play? The guy played pretty much everywhere, but spent the most time as a DH, at second and at third. So the question became, who are my other options at second and third? It ended up coming down to Jack Crooks (.241/.386/.322) and Gene DeMontreville (.303/.340/.373), both second basemen, putting Molitor at third. Once discovering that DeMontreville was also the only Minnesota-born player to play over 300 games at shortstop, that left Crooks at second.

Left Field: Dave Winfield (Padres, Yankees, Angels, Blue Jays, Twins & Indians; 1973-1995)
Centerfield: Mike Kingery (Royals, Mariners, Giants, Athletics, Rockies & Pirates; 1986-1996)
Right Field: Roger Maris (Indians, Athletics, Yankees & Cardinals; 1957-1968)

Really, Winfield was more of a right fielder than left, but he did have over 300 games at both and as I said earlier, I'm claiming Maris as a Minnesotan here, and he pretty much only played right. As for Kingery (.268/.330/.391) in center, well I'm not claiming he's an amazing player, but he was the only person on my list who played at least 300 games as a centerfielder. He was generally a role player, although he did get into more than 100 games in his last three seasons with Colorado and Pittsburgh.

Designated Hitter: Terry Steinbach (Athletics & Twins; 1986-1999)

I very well could have gone with Chick Gandil here. He had a higher average WAR per season as Steinbach as well as a higher peak three seasons (although their single season highs were the same). But I didn't because he was also the ringleader of the 1919 White Sox players who threw the World Series, and by all accounts was just a generally unlikable guy. So I didn't want him on my team.

Starting Pitcher: Chief Bender (Athletics Terrapins, Phillies, White Sox; 1903-1925)

I actually had the hardest time deciding which pitcher to choose. I could have just said Bender's in the Hall of Fame, he's in, but I wanted to give Jack Morris a chance too. Morris actually has the higher average WAR, but it could be a lot closer. After Bender's career was over in 1917, he became a coach and actually pitched one more game for the White Sox in 1925! It didn't go very well as he pitched one inning without a strikeout, but gave up a walk and a two-run homer. That one inning was worth -0.1 WAR according to baseball-reference. Bender does have the higher peak 3 years (16.3 to 15.1) as well as peak single season (6.0 to 5.8). So while I was leading toward Bender, I probably could have gone either way on that. The problem is WAR isn't as effective for players who played in such different eras. In the early 1900's it was a lot easier to get a higher WAR because the variance between good and bad players was much bigger. So I also consulted their career Win Shares, which is more consistent through time as a measuring device. Win Shares also showed that Bender wins. It was still quite close, but even with Win Shares, he had the better peak, a better three year peak, and he also had the better average Win Shares per season (even including that one inning in 1925 as a season).

Relief Ace: Glen Perkins (Twins; 2006-2014)

This was another close one. If you're using Perkins' entire career, Tom Burgmeier beats him, but since I'm looking for a reliever (and because I'm hugely biased), I only used Perkins' stats as a reliever. Burgmeier had some good seasons, especially with Boston in 1980 when he was an All Star and had a 4.1(!) WAR, but Glen Perkins still has time to build his relief stats a bit, and Burgmeier had some weak years as well. Only we can't write them off, because he was always a relief man.

The Twins Way: The Worst Way?

A couple weeks ago someone was talking to me about a local radio personality freaking out about playing "the Twins way" and how that needs to stop because "the Twins way is the worst way". That got me to thinking, are the Twins still playing "the Twins way"?

I've always thought of "the Twins way" as being "doing all the little things right." Things like running the bases, sacrificing runners over, not committing errors, throwing strikes and not walking batters.

For base running I decided to use fangraphs.com's Ultimate Base Running statistic. UBR uses linear weights to determine how much value a player gives (or loses) doing things like going first to third on a single, getting thrown out trying to stretch a hit, or advancing on a throw. It uses 0.0 as league average so a negative number is below average and positive is above. This is an individual stat so I may be using it out of context taking the team's UBR, but work with me here.

I'm not trying to say sacrifices are the best way to win games, but I am saying the Twins have always valued it as a skill and talked up their players being able to get it done.

We could get into a debate about errors if we wanted to, but again since that's what the Twins organization likes to talk up (instead of other more useful stats like UZR or TZL) that's what we'll use.

For pitching we're going to look at zone% (the percentage of all pitches thrown in the strike zone) and BB/9.

Below all the playoff teams' stats are in bold while all stats that were below league average (American league average in the case of sac hits) are italicized. (Also, I projected sac hits and errors to a full 162 game season.)

Year       UBR       SH       E       ZONE%       BB/9      
2002       1.8         33        74     57.4             2.73
2003       4.3         31        87     53.3             2.48
2004       -5.5        38        101   56.1             2.63
2005       -4.1        51        102   56.0             2.14
2006       10.1       52        84     54.6             2.23
2007       1.3         34        95     52.5             2.63
2008       17.8       31        108   53.6             2.50
2009       21.0       42        76     50.3             2.89
2010       -2.0        46        78     48.7             2.37
2011       -2.4        42        119   45.9             3.04
2012       3.6         34        107   45.4             2.91
2013       1.1         58        72     46.2             2.56

Conclusions:

1. The Twins have not, as a team, run the bases well with any sort of consistency regardless of whether they were good that year or not.
2. The Twins sacrifice A LOT! There were years (2005, 2006, 2009, 2010) when they sacrificed more than double the American league average. There were years when they sacrificed more than the major league average. That's crazy to me.
3. Certainly pitching the Twins way has not changed at all.
4. The past two years errors became an issue (also in 2008, which was not a playoff year, but still above .500), but improving that this year has not made a significant difference in overall team performance.
5. Clearly four of these five categories strongly represent the Twins philosophy as they are consistently above average. But their record hasn't been nearly as consistent, especially the last couple years. It can't be the worst way, it helped contribute to six division titles in nine years. But there are obviously more important things that need to be focused on.

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