Which 1960's Minnesota Twins Team Was the Best?

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.

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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