Which 1960's Minnesota Twins Team Was the Best?

[Nate Palmer]

The 1960's were a bit of a golden era for Twins baseball. They had just taken up residence in Minnesota and put together some competitive teams. Which of those teams was the best team?The 1960’s were quite the decade for Minnesotans as they welcomed the Twins into the state from Washington D.C. There were ups and downs but overall it was a good decade of baseball for the Twins. Amongst all that baseball it seems three seasons stand out above the rest (or are at least mentioned the most) as we reminisce about the days gone by.

 

Those seasons are 1965, 1967, and 1969. 1965 resulted in a trip to the World Series, even if it was a loss to the Dodgers. In 1967, the Twins fell just short of the pennant and tied the Tigers for second in the American League. Then in 1969 the Twins participated in baseball's first postseason playoff but lost in the ALCS to Baltimore.

 

Harmon Killebrew, Bob Allison, Tony Oliva, Jim Perry, and Jim Kaat formed the core of players that was the base for each of those rosters. That caused each roster to have a similar look to it in many ways, but there are always differences based on the performance in a given season and the players that filled in around that core.

 

Is it possible for us to pick which roster was the best? Let's give it a shot. For starters, here is a table that takes a number of players from each roster with their bWAR next to them. As always, WAR is not the perfect metric but it gets us started in this conversation.

 

Download attachment: Screen Shot 2020-05-11 at 7.41.23 PM.png

 

In the graphic, the pink highlight represents a bWAR over 6.0. The golden/yellow coloring represents a bWAR between 4.0-5.9. In 1965 the Twins had five players at 4.0 bWAR or more, in 1967 six players, and in 1969 seven players. Of those players Zoilo Versalles had the best season in 1965 at 7.2 bWAR when he fittingly won the league MVP award.

 

What stands out from those bWAR highlights is that it looks like the ‘65 squad was all bats. The ‘67 team wasn’t as extreme, but was almost the mirror and was heavy on pitching. Then in ‘69 there was a shift back to the bats.

 

Last week I wrote an article asking “What Could Have Been?” in regards to injuries. The real “What if?” may be what could have been if the ‘67 rotation could have been paired up with one of the other two lineups.

 

By the bWAR numbers listed it is hard not to lean towards the 1969 roster simply because it appears to have some of the bats to go with two over 4.0 bWAR pitchers and one that is almost there in Dave Boswell at 3.8 bWAR. What creates pause is that the 1965 bats were just so good it is hard to vote against them.

 

To just test this out a bit more, I looked up the leaderboard for each season for qualified batters in the American League for OPS and home runs. In 1965, the Twins had four in the top 20 for OPS and five in the top 20 for home runs. In a bit of a shocker, the 1967 squad placed four in the top 20 for OPS and three in the top 20 for home runs. Then 1969 carried three for OPS and two for home runs in the top 20.

 

So while the best case would be to Frankenstein these rosters together to get a great roster, it seems at the end of the day the ‘67 roster may have been the best even though it was unable to get in on any postseason play under that time’s format. What do you think? Which roster would you take?

 

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[Tom Froemming]

The easy knee-jerk reaction would be to say "1965, duh!" but of course that '69 team was great, and looking at this it's a wonder how the '67 team didn't fare any better than 91-71. Seems appropriate there was a mid-season managerial change. 

 

Jim Kaat was snake bit that season. Somehow the Twins were just 17-20 in games he started. In late August of that year, Kaat gave up one earned run over eight innings in back-to-back starts and the Twins lost both of them. Ugh. Seems like it was just a year where nothing synced up like it could have.

[Jimv]

I'd go with the 1967 team.  The league was brutally tough that year.  Not only did four teams have a chance to win the pennant in the last few days, but the next tier included teams like the Orioles, who swept the WS the year before and who would dominate the very good Twins team in the ALCS  two years later.  And we'd still have won the pennant if we hadn't choked away the last two games.

 

I don't think we were good enough to win the World Series, though.  Gibson was essentially unhittable in his three starts, so we would have had to win the other 4 games, two of them at St Louis.

[mikelink45]

1965 - We weathered major injuries to Pascual and Killebrew.  Imagine last year if we lost Berrios and Cruz for half the season. Add a little more WAR to their totals if they had been able to play.  If Killebrew had 50 more games in a really great year and Pascual had gotten 10 more starts!  The weak spot for that team was 2B.

 

https://twinstrivia.com/2015/08/03/remembering-1965-part-15-killebrew-injured-and-pascual-has-surgery/

[Doctor Gast]

 

1965 - We weathered major injuries to Pascual and Killebrew.  Imagine last year if we lost Berrios and Cruz for half the season. Add a little more WAR to their totals if they had been able to play.  If Killebrew had 50 more games in a really great year and Pascual had gotten 10 more starts!  The weak spot for that team was 2B.

 

https://twinstrivia.com/2015/08/03/remembering-1965-part-15-killebrew-injured-and-pascual-has-surgery/

Twins had only a 4 pitcher rotation in `65 so they had a 3 man rotation when Pasqual was out? They were work horses back then. They should have gotten another starter. WS aren`t always to the best team. It`s to the hot team at the time

[Nate Palmer]

 

Twins had only a 4 pitcher rotation in `65 so they had a 3 man rotation when Pasqual was out? They were work horses back then. They should have gotten another starter. WS aren`t always to the best team. It`s to the hot team at the time

They did still filled out the 4-man from what I have understood reading back. That was where guys like Boswell and Merritt got some really good experience. 

[mikelink45]

 

They did still filled out the 4-man from what I have understood reading back. That was where guys like Boswell and Merritt got some really good experience. 

They also started their 37 year old reliever Dick Stigman 8 times. 

[stringer bell]

Stigman was born in 1936 (in Nimrod, MN!) so he was 29 in 1965.

[mikelink45]

 

Stigman was born in 1936 (in Nimrod, MN!) so he was 29 in 1965.

You are right - sorry for the error, but glad for the correction.