Given a thoroughly disappointing end to the Twins’ 2024 season, I wanted to look back to interesting (and hopefully excellent) Twins performances throughout my lifetime. As I often do, I started at Stathead and began exploring. Here are two batches of unimportant tidbits.
Intentional Walks
My boyhood baseball hero, Joe Mauer, led all catchers in intentional walks during my lifetime.11996 through now. His 145 intentional walks comfortably beat Mike Piazza’s 120.2To be fair, Piazza played five seasons before I was born and had 146 career intentional walks. Don’t take this away from me.
On the other side, Twins legend Kevin Slowey is one of 15 pitchers who threw at least 650 career innings and intentionally walked three or fewer batters.
Diverging from the Twins focus for a moment, the most exciting name on this list is Yusei Kikuchi, who has thrown over 800 career innings and never issued an intentional walk. He’s the only pitcher since integration in 1947 to reach 650 career innings and never intentionally walk a batter. Reducing the threshold to 500 career innings results in two more names: Dean Kremer of the Orioles, who has pitched exactly 500 innings, and Tigers ace Tarik Skubal, with over 570 innings.
Sacrifice Flies
During my lifetime, the Twins have the sixth-most sacrifice flies. Despite this, none of their seasons are in the top 300 of sacrifice flies. They also gave up the seventh-most sacrifice flies, allowing 21 fewer than they managed to get.
Among Twins players during that time, Justin Morneau hit the most sacrifice flies, with 63, narrowly beating out Joe Mauer’s 60.
Dave Hollins—who I’ve never heard of as he only played with the Twins in 1996—leads the Twins during my lifetime in most at-bats without a sacrifice fly, with 422. In second place is Gilberto Celestino, who I do know; he failed at the same task in 370 at-bats.
Livan Hernandez has a healthy lead in the most sacrifice allowed among pitchers during my lifetime with 118, 25 more than second-place C.C. Sabathia. Livan does have the great distinction of pitching for the Twins in 23 games in 2008, during which he gave up nine sacrifice flies. Then, the Twins released him on waivers after the trade deadline.
- 11996 through now.
- 2To be fair, Piazza played five seasons before I was born and had 146 career intentional walks. Don’t take this away from me.