One Magical Summer
Position by Postion VORP Leaders

With a day off of from Twins baseball, it gave me a chance to do some digging in the statistical archives. Since I wasn’t alive for the Twins’ move to Minneapolis, or the subsequent early years, there are huge gaps in my knowledge of the team’s history. Luckily, I have lived through two World Series wins for my team, which gives me some historical perspective. But I would have loved to see the ’65 Twins go up against Koufax, or to see Rod Carew slap his way to 38 batting titles. Sadly, the best we can do is to look back at the record books, but at least there are enough stats that are adjusted for era to compare today’s Twins against the Twins from previous years.

I chronicled the highest and lowest VORP season by a Twins regular since 1972, as far back as BP keeps records on this sort of thing. Although VORP is a cumulative stat, a player can put together a pretty horrendous number pretty quickly, so I set minimum playing time requirements in order to have all regulars in the picture (I believe the all-time worst season by a Twins position player belongs to Al Newman in ’91, which doesn’t say that much about the team since he was strictly a backup). And, as a quick refresher, VORP stands for Value Over Replacement Player, and takes into account total offensive contribution over a player that could readily serve as a replacement, like a high AAA player or the last guy on a major league bench. Replacement Level is more complicated than that, and there is a specific statistical definition, but for our purposes that explanation should suffice.

Here is the position-by-position list of best and worse Twins starters (min. 400 PAs, 50 IP, Name VORP/Year):

C: A.J. Pierzynski 41.4/2003
Glenn Borgmann -4.6/1975
1b: Rod Carew 101.5/1977
Ron Coomer 0.9/2000
2b: Chuck Knoblauch 108.0/1996
Al Newman -2.3/1990
3b: Gary Gaetti 54.2/1988
Scott Leius 0.0/1992
SS: Roy Smalley 58.9/1979
Christian Guzman -20.1/1999
Lf: Shane Mack 58.4/1992
Rick Sofield -3.8/1980
RF: Shane Mack 44.1/1991
Hoskin Powell -0.5/1978
CF: Kirby Puckett 82.3/1988
Rich Becker -9.1/1995
DH: Chili Davis 50.3/1991
Paul Molitor 9.9/1998
P: Johan Santana 88.8/2004
Brad Havens -25.8/1983 (Sean Bergman, -25.7/2000)

-Judging by VORP and consistency, Rod Carew is pretty clearly the all-time greatest Twin, although I believe many fans would argue that such a distinction belongs to Kirby. Kirby was great, posting 91.9 WARP3 with peak seasons of 11.0, 10.5 and 9.2. Carew topped an 80 VORP at two positions with a 115.2 career WARP3 and single seasons of 11.5, 10.4, 10.2. Both were great, but Carew was probably greater.

-Many bad VORPs come from young players rather than the truly awful. At first, I assumed that the worst players would put up the worst VORP, but the players they keep sending out to play aren’t the least talented, but those who need seasoning. Players like Latroy Hawkins, Eddie Guardado, J.C. Romero, Doug Mientkiewicz, Christian Guzman and Dave Goltz all had full seasons below replacement level before panning out and making positive contributions. (I realize that I just made the implicit argument that Christian Guzman is not one of “the worst players,” but at the time, we may have believed that).

-Santana’s 2004 was the best Twins pitching performance of all-time, but there are lots that give him a run. Bert Blyleven put up an 80+ VORP in his first Twins stint, and Frank Viola did it as well. Brad Radke and- get ready for it- Joe Mays also put up stand-out VORPs for the Twins at some point.

-Currently pushing 30 runs of VORP, Joe Mauer could pass A.J. Pierzynski this season for the all-time catcher’s mark.

-A couple of numbers that really surprised me: Todd Walker’s 55.4 VORP in 1998, in spite of TK hating him like a fat kid hates vegetables. Also, the immortal Scott Stahoviak actually put together a pretty decent season in 1996: .284/.375/.469 26.1 VORP in 469 PAs.