Where Does Willi Castro Rank Among the Worst Team MVPs in Twins History?

[Cody Christie]

Willi Castro was an All-Star this season, but his performance collapsed in the second half, like the team's. So, where does he rank among the worst team MVPs in Twins history?

Image courtesy of Matt Blewett-Imagn Images

There have been some bad Twins teams throughout the team’s history, with some particularly dark stretches in the 1990’s and 2010’s. However, the local chapter of the BBWAA has voted for a team MVP every year since the franchise moved to Minnesota. Rod Carew and Kirby Puckett won the award six times, and Harmon Killebrew won it five times in the team’s first decade. There have also been some surprising players who have won the award in multiple years. 

Baseball writers have taken a different view on voting in recent years, and that has played out in the voting process. Sometimes, injuries and poor performance hurt the club to the point where there is no clear MVP. In other years, multiple contenders make narrowing down one name at the top of the ballot challenging. Here is a look at the top five worst team MVPs in franchise history. 

Honorable Mentions: Matt Lawton (2000): 2.4 WAR, Miguel Sano (2015): 2.4 WAR

5. Brian Harper (1993): 2.4 WAR
The 1993 Twins finished 20 games below .500 and in fifth place in the AL West. The Oakland A’s were the lone team in the division with a worse record. Harper won team MVP despite ranking sixth on the team in WAR. In 147 games, he hit .304/.347/.425 (.772) with a 107 OPS+ and as many walks (29) as strikeouts (29). Voters were likely drawn to his high batting average, especially for a catcher. To be fair, there were no standout performances on the Twins that season. Chuck Knoblauch led the team with 3.6 WAR, and Kevin Tapani finished second with 3.2 WAR. Kirby Puckett was the team’s top offensive player with a 120 OPS+, but his defensive totals in center field brought down his overall WAR. Harper had also won the team MVP in 1990, making him one of this award's most unlikely two-time winners. 

4. Michael Cuddyer (2011): 2.3 WAR
There were high expectations for the Twins entering 2011 after a tremendous 2010 season. However, things quickly fell apart, and the team was never able to recover. Minnesota narrowly missed the 100-loss mark by winning three of their final four games to end the season. The team still finished with a miserable 63-99 record, 32 games out of first place in the AL Central. Scott Baker was the clear WAR leader on the team as he had two more WAR than Cuddyer. Denard Span finished slightly ahead of Cuddyer in the WAR department too. Cuddy was elected to the All-Star Game in 2011 and finished the year hitting .284/.346/.459 (.805) with a 120 OPS+. It was a disappointing year, and that often means there are few individual performances on the team to be excited about. 

3. Willi Castro (2024): 1.6 WAR
Minnesota entered the season as the clear favorite in the AL Central and had playoff odds of over 90% in the season’s second half. However, the team went 9-18 (.333 W-L%) in September and finished in fourth place in the AL Central. Despite the collapse, plenty of players could have been named the team MVP. Carlos Correa performed at an MVP level in the first half and led the team in WAR. Byron Buxton played over 100 games for only the second time in his career while being arguably the AL’s second-best center fielder. Bailey Ober was terrific in the rotation, and Griffin Jax was dominant in the bullpen. Castro finished 12th on the team in WAR behind players like Jose Miranda, Simeon Woods Richardson, and Ryan Jeffers. His defensive flexibility was valuable to the team, but someone else should have won team MVP. 

2. Vic Power (1962): 1.5 WAR
The Twins’ second season in Minnesota saw the team finish with 91 wins and in second place in the American League. Minnesota won over 60% of their games in the season's second half, but it wasn’t enough to catch the Yankees atop the AL standings. Power was the team’s regular first baseman, and he hit .290/.316/.421 (.737) with a 94 OPS+ in 144 games. Harmon Killebrew led the AL in home runs (48) and RBI (126), so it seems strange that the writers didn’t vote for him. He had the most strikeouts (142) in all of baseball, so perhaps the writers were penalizing him. Camilo Pascual led the team with 6.1 WAR, with Jim Kaat ranking second (5.7 WAR). Killebrew won the award in 1961, and he’d win it five times in his career. Power wasn’t even among the team’s best hitters, so it’s strange that he ended up as team MVP.  

1. Jeff Reardon (1987): 0.7 WAR
The 1987 Twins are known as a group of unexpecting players who somehow fought their way to a World Series title. It may be fitting that the team MVP is a player who was a complimentary player for that club. Reardon pitched 80 1/3 innings and posted a 4.48 ERA (103 ERA+) with a 1.22 WHIP. He racked up 31 saves out of the team’s 85 victories, and that might have helped his cause. Frank Viola, the eventual World Series MVP, should have been the easy choice for team MVP. He posted 8.1 WAR as he had a 2.90 ERA (159 ERA+) with a 1.18 WHIP in over 250 innings. Bert Blyleven, Kirby Puckett, and Kent Hrbek all finished with 4.0 WAR or more, which would have put them in the MVP conversation, too. Reardon looks like a silly pick, but there are far better memories from the 1987 campaign. 

Team MVP can be tough to decipher especially on team’s with no clear dominant player. It's also tough to name a team MVP when there have been teams fielding an uncompetitive roster. However, some of the names mentioned above look like unconventional picks when compared to other players on the same team. 

What stands out about the team MVP picks mentioned above? Leave a COMMENT and start the discussion. 

 

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[Fire Dan Gladden]

Subjectivity in voting makes for some poor choices.

I am a little surprised not to see representation from the mid-90's.

[jorgenswest]

Why did you choose WAR sole measure towards determining most valuable? Aren’t there things valuable to the team not measured in WAR? Could a reliever ever win?

Why Baseball Reference WAR over Fangraphs WAR? Wouldn’t it be better to at least report both?

[Blyleven2011]

Some bad teams in 2021 and 2022 , 

Polanco mvp in 2021 , Correa mvp in 2022  ...

Both deserving but man was it bad baseball   ...

[Mike Sixel]

What a mean spirited article. Sad.

[chinmusic]

38 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

What a mean spirited article. Sad.

And rather pointless, in my opinion.

[Road trip]

I actually kind of understand the Reardon choice in '87.  

Those of us scarred by the memories of Ron Davis closing games in the years prior viewed Reardon as a bullpen savior.  No lead was safe for Davis, and he racked up a staggering number of losses and blown saves in the early-mid 80s.  By '87 Davis was gone and Reardon arrived, becoming an integral part of changing the Twins from perpetual losers to World Series winners.  He wasn't perfect, but most leads were safe in his hands.

[Whitey333]

What an awful and depressing article.  Come on can't you guys do any better than that?

[farmerguychris]

His value goes beyond WAR.  His ability to shift from one position to another mid-game allowed us to put our best players on the field as the opposing pitchers changed.  

Considering most of our 'best' players only played a shortened season due to injuries, hard to see anyone but Castro or Santana being worthy from the position side of things.

[Doctor Gast]

We've had a lot of bad teams in the mid 70's through the early 80's when I had stopped watching them. There have to be worse ones in there.

[Parfigliano]

This team would kill to have a Cuddyer type right about now.  Then again they would also probably platoon him.

[DJL44]

Reardon over Viola and Power over Killebrew are picks that look really bad in hindsight.

[Al from SoDak]

I like this article. I like the historical aspect of it. 

[h2oface]

3 hours ago, Whitey333 said:

What an awful and depressing article.  Come on can't you guys do any better than that?

You could always write one yourself and let others complain. 

[gman]

I guess it shows how important WAR is to people picking MVP candidates.

[dxpavelka]

Regarding Vic Power in 1962, I think that may say more about the writers than it does about Vic Power or Harmon.  Case in point:  This article, for all practical intents and purposes appears to use WAR as a barometer, and yet almost a dozen guys on the team had a higher WAR than Castro. Go figure.

[ladrossetwin]

I don't get the meanspirited and sad comments.  I found this interesting and for the most part shows there were not clear cut winners in these years and MVP tends to be little subjective and not always well defined by statistical measures.

[Major League Ready]

1 hour ago, dxpavelka said:

Regarding Vic Power in 1962, I think that may say more about the writers than it does about Vic Power or Harmon.  Case in point:  This article, for all practical intents and purposes appears to use WAR as a barometer, and yet almost a dozen guys on the team had a higher WAR than Castro. Go figure.

The Fangraphs rankings were quite different but the author chose to ignore them.  There were 3 Twins (Correa/Buxton/Lopez) with higher fWAR.

[Rod Carews Birthday]

I don't necessarily quibble with the metric chosen, although more data could have been important and enlightening.  However, I think a comprehensive listing of Twins MVPs would have been in order for this article along with a title (less click-baity for sure) like "How Do Recent Twins MVPs Stack Up Against Twins All-time MVPs".  By the title of the article you imply that Willi Castro must suck because he is "among the worst", when in fact, he played very well, was very valuable, and the team was lucky to have him.  That does him a disservice.  Others, on the other hand, underachieved at an extreme rate, which is why someone with lower level stats is the MVP.  Not calling this to attention moves the blame from poorly performing players to someone who performed well. 

[mikelink45]

I don't even like the premise of being the worst MVP. MVP is based on the team team and the year. Castro did what he was asked to do and he did it well. He's a deserving MVP and so are all the others. So I'm sorry, I just don't like the idea of selecting the worst of the players who are considered the best for each year

[Morland]

I think Reardon was chosen in 1987 because their closer (Ron Davis) had been so bad the year before and Reardon stablized the bullpen.

[Finlander]

I think the fact that Castro was able to stay in the field for a whole season is valuable in itself - it is the reason why he led the team in doubles and triples, along with his expected steals. He slumped at the back end of the season, as did nearly everyone else. Maybe the players' disheartened moods after the inactive trade deadline were contagious and contributed to the slumping. But I have no issue with Castro as team MVP. It's a statement on the condition of the rest of the team. It is very telling that he was the only Twins position player on the All Star roster.

Vic Power - that was a fun one to remember! I was a small kid, remembered him for being a vacuum cleaner with the glove taking errant infield throws. He was no Killebrew of course, but he sure did help the infielders.

[Finlander]

(I meant to say "...no Killebrew at the plate...")

[gagu]

I would have appreciated this article had the headline been true, and/or had the Baseball-Reference WAR ranking method been clearly stated in the first part of the text. 

The Baseball-Reference WAR result is not the be-all and end-all determiner of overall value, especially with Fan Graphs having different opinions.

[old nurse]

Perhaps the owners of the site need to make a rule that the bloggers can’t write about teams that existed before they were born. 

 

WAR as a criteria  for MVP. You can have the opinion that is the most important thing, perhaps it will be someday if there is ever any agreement on defensive metrics.   MVP is a baseball writers award,. The blogger seems oblivious to the rules that have been in place since the beginning.  From the writers association website 

The ballot states

Dear Voter:

There is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means. It is up to the individual voter to decide who was the Most Valuable Player in each league to his team. The MVP need not come from a division winner or other playoff qualifier.

The rules of the voting remain the same as they were written on the first ballot in 1931:

1.  Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense.

2.  Number of games played.

3.  General character, disposition, loyalty and effort.

4.  Former winners are eligible.

5.  Members of the committee may vote for more than one member of a team.

You are also urged to give serious consideration to all your selections, from 1 to 10. A 10th-place vote can influence the outcome of an election. You must fill in all 10 places on your ballot. Only regular-season performances are to be taken into consideration.

Keep in mind that all players are eligible for MVP, including pitchers and designated hitters.

 

That third criteria is the subjective portion. Stomp your foot and complain, thems the ru

[dxpavelka]

22 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

The Fangraphs rankings were quite different but the author chose to ignore them.  There were 3 Twins (Correa/Buxton/Lopez) with higher fWAR.

any one of whom would have been a better MVP choice.  But what do I know?

 

[Squirrel]

On 11/6/2024 at 11:40 AM, jorgenswest said:

Why did you choose WAR sole measure towards determining most valuable? Aren’t there things valuable to the team not measured in WAR? Could a reliever ever win?

Why Baseball Reference WAR over Fangraphs WAR? Wouldn’t it be better to at least report both?

So typical of this writer. Half-assed thrown together article nearly for the clicks.

[mikelink45]

On 11/7/2024 at 4:12 PM, Finlander said:

I think the fact that Castro was able to stay in the field for a whole season is valuable in itself - it is the reason why he led the team in doubles and triples, along with his expected steals. He slumped at the back end of the season, as did nearly everyone else. Maybe the players' disheartened moods after the inactive trade deadline were contagious and contributed to the slumping. But I have no issue with Castro as team MVP. It's a statement on the condition of the rest of the team. It is very telling that he was the only Twins position player on the All Star roster.

Vic Power - that was a fun one to remember! I was a small kid, remembered him for being a vacuum cleaner with the glove taking errant infield throws. He was no Killebrew of course, but he sure did help the infielders.

And his positivity is not covered by WAR - he was great.