Jim Holt

[Greglw3]

Jim Holt played for the Twins from 1968-1974 and was a personal favorite of mine as a good hitter.

This was my memory and I discovered from looking at Baseball Reference that impression was very likely formed from the fact that 1973 was the season that I discovered, very much surprisingly while scanning the AM dial (hoping I could find the Twins), that I could get the Twins games on my stereo system tuner from WHO in Des Moines Iowa, with Herb Carneal announcing. That just happened to be 1B/OF Jim Holt's best season as a Twin when he slashed .297/.341/.442. He had an (non-existent back then) OPS+ of 116. He also had 25 doubles, 3 triples and 11 homers with 58 RBIs in 1973. It was his biggest output in his Twins career and, indeed, in his career overall, with 476 plate appearances and 441 at bats.

It's my recollection that Holt was mostly a platoon guy in his other years with the Twins as a left handed hitter. He had two other seasons of 340 and 309 at bats, respectively.

Jim Holt was traded in 1974 to the Oakland A’s for Pat Bourque, a trade I didn’t like or even understand. Bourque was a really fringe player, posting very low batting averages in his career and was hitting only .229 for the A’s at the time of the trade. In researching this article, I realized that Jim Holt played on a World Series winner, the 1974 Oakland A’s. [RIP Baseball, ripbaseball.com] And maybe, pure speculation on my part, Calvin Griffith was trying to do a favor to Jim Holt by trading him to the A’s. From the A’s perspective, Holt had that .297 season with the Twins in his recent background.

Jim Holt finished his career with Oakland as a minor role player in 1977. He played for 9 seasons and finished with a career .265 batting average. He was not a power hitter so OPS+ is going to underestimate his value compared to those with even moderate power. This was a time before the massive power booms to come so line drive hitting was of more value than today in 2024. The league leaders in home runs were usually in the 30s, with some exceptions.

Jim passed away in 2019 at the age of 74.

Greg Allen aka/ Greglw3

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[Twins63]

He was a player I followed if for the only reason that supposedly he was dating one of my elementary school teachers in the early 70s. Also hated when he was traded. Not a lot of players in the 70s for an impressionable kid to follow outside the usual suspects...

[IndianaTwin]

Nice. As a kid, I also started following the Twins in 1973 on WHO, which also led me to think that Jim Holt was better than he probably actually was. 

[gregens]

I fondly remember Jim Holt profusely sweating while patiently signing autographs for us kids after a game back in the late 60's or early 70's.   He was the only Twin signing that day.  Thanks Jim!

[Dave Mona]

I started covering the Twins as The Minneapolis Tribune beat writer in 1968. One of the first players I met at Tinker Field was Jim Holt. He had been claimed as a Rule 5 pick in the off season. I remember him as being very shy and polite (military background.) The first day the players came out in uniform he was wearing number 45. At the time Pabst had introduced a popular drink named Colt 45 Malt Liquor. I asked PR Director Tom Mee if there was any connection and he said it was an idea advanced by Don Cassidy of the tiny Twins marketing staff and the team thought, "Why not?"