Carew put up 57 fWAR as a Twin, in less years than Mauer has played in MN....and Mauer is 9 fWAR behind right now. Killibrew put up 66.

 

 

btw, JUST AS A TWIN, Blyleven put up 50.4 fWAR! He had a 10.8 fWAR season!

I think Kaat put up around 50 fWAR as a Twins also

 

David Ortiz played 1 year here, as did Thome? But I get your general point....

 

Yeah I think you have to look at them during the period they were here, for better or for worse. Carew had a remarkable career - but 1/3 of it took place for another team.

 

Yeah I think you have to look at them during the period they were here, for better or for worse. Carew had a remarkable career - but 1/3 of it took place for another team.

 

and yet, look at his fWAR just as a Twin compared to Mauer's.....

Edited September 8, 20179 yr by Mike Sixel

Edit to the above stats*:

 

blyleven as a Twin: 55.7 fWAR

Kaat: 53.3

 

Killibrew: 66.3

Carew as a Twin: 56.9

Mauer: 48

 

*includes Senators time, but I left off the all time leader, who was never a Twin....

 

and yet, look at his fWAR just as a Twin compared to Mauer's.....

 

And again, that's a stat that is going to be advantageous to players who didn't spend the downside of their career with the Twins since it's an overall stat and down years cut into it. Or am I missing something?

 

 

And again, that's a stat that is going to be advantageous to players who didn't spend the downside of their career with the Twins since it's an overall stat and down years cut into it. Or am I missing something?

Neither Carew nor Mauer have/had a negative season of fWAR so it's a moot point.

When we're talking greatest Twins should we penalize guys for sticking around to the end? That hardly seems fair,

 

Yes, in fact this comes up often in "Is this player HOF-worthy?" conversations.

 

Even below average players can have a positive WAR.  If a guy sticks around at the end of his career for 7 years with 1-2 WAR each year, he has padded his WAR 7-14 points along with all of his other stats.

 

Take a look at Pete Rose's WAR v. WAA. Rose lost 14 WAA over his last 6 years, but only about 1 point of WAR. Nevertheless he padded his other stats a lot over those last 6 years, in spite of being useless.

 

Or look at it this way.  If a serviceable infielder puts up 2 WAR a year but is very popular and plays for 20 years, he has 40 WAR.  Kirby Puckett had 50 WAR. Switch to WAA.  Puckett drops to 25 WAA but the "serviceable infielder" drops to the single digits.

 

But if you don't want an uberstat and only want to go by peak WAR years, JAWS exists for you.  JAWS looks at the best 7 years of WAR and then compares it to players at the same position.  However, we can ignore the "same position player" part and just look at 7-year peak WAR.

 

WAR in peak 7 years:

 

Carew:  49.7

Oliva:  38.6

Mauer:  38.5

Killebrew:  38.1

Puckett:  37.5

 

If we want to go full-on JAWS, here are the numbers:

 

Carew:  65.4

Killebrew:  49.2

Mauer:  45.8

Puckett: 44.2

Oliva:  40.8

 

Killebrew was great, the first Twins player in the HOF and it was well deserved, but it's really hard to find a way to slice the data that says that he was better than Carew.

Edited September 9, 20179 yr by Doomtints

A lot of attention is given to the "JAWS" Leaders. It's a combination of a player's best seven years and career WAR. Mauer is ranked the 7th best catcher of all time. From Baseball Reference.