Eric the Blue

Got a little misty-eyed watching Dick Bremer get a little misty-eyed while being inducted into the Twins’ Hall of Fame this afternoon. They’re playing now, and the telecast just cut to Bert Blyleven, his ceremonial duties discharged, enjoying the game with a Coors Lite cracked open in front of him: everything’s coming back into focus. My free-associating mind settles on the one-sided game from years ago when Dick and Bert began assembling, on-air, an all body parts team. They had Bill Hand, Rollie Fingers, maybe a couple others and then, after several seconds of dead air, Bert said, “Not sure this is a good idea, Richard.”

Seeing all those old-time Twins made me curious about some statistical tidbit from the past and, in the course of looking it up, I was impressed at how Killebrew dominates all-time team statistical leaders in batting categories. He’s at the top of the list for

• homers
• RBIs
• runs
• total bases
• extra base hits
• slugging percentage
• OPS

You could say that it all flows from the homers–he hit 559, almost twice as many as Kent Hrbek, who’s in second place with 296. An extra 260-some homers gives Harmon a big head start in all those other categories.

Well sure, that’s fair: homers win games. I should say that, with respect to winning and newfangled statistical calculations, Killebrew is second in WAR (“wins above replacement”), just behind Rod Carew and just ahead of Joe Mauer and Kirby Puckett. No real surprises at the top of that list. I think I’ve mentioned before that I anyway am surprised by Byron Buxton’s place among all-time slugging percentage leaders:

Killebrew .514
Buxton .495
Morneau .485
Sano .482
Hrbek .481

Taking account of his fielding and base running, Buck would be in the mix for greatest Twin ever if it weren’t for the injuries that have kept him off the field.