Who Here Even Remembers Twins Third Baseman Eric Soderholm?

@mikelink45 had a blog post here on Twin Daily in 2019 about the best third basemen in Twins history and presented 11 choices who could be considered at least one of the best. Of those 11, Eric Soderholm is easily the one on the list that I know the least about. 

Eric Soderholm was born September 24, 1948, in Cortland, New York. After graduating from high school, he attended South Georgia College in Douglas, Georgia, and had a very successful baseball career.

Soderholm was originally drafted in the 11^th round of the June 1967 Major League Draft by the Kansas City Athletics. He did not sign and returned to South Georgia College for another season. Soderholm was then selected with the first overall pick by the Twins in the secondary phase of the draft (January 1968). For those who don’t remember, the January draft was for players who had graduated from school after the June draft, which was timed to coincide with the most common graduation date for high schools and colleges. That secondary January draft existed from 1966 to 1987. (Famously, Kirby Puckett was a top choice in the January 1982 draft.)

After working methodically through the minor league system, Soderholm debuted for the Twins on September 3, 1971, in a win against Oakland. He went 1-4 with a home run, a walk, and two runs scored. From 1971 to 1975, Soderholm batted .257/.336/.389 in five years with the Twins. He hit 36 home runs and accumulated a WAR of 10.1. That’s a rather good five-year stretch. In August of 1975, Soderholm injured his knee. He missed the rest of 1975 and all of 1976. That was it for his Twins career. After the 1976 season, he was released by the Twins and signed with the Chicago White Sox.

Soderholm made an immediate impact with the White Sox in 1977, batting .280 with 25 home runs, and was named the American League Comeback Player of the Year by the Sporting News. He followed that up with another 20-home run season in 1978. He later played with the Texas Rangers and New York Yankees. The only playoff team for which he played was the 1980 Yankees. He had one postseason hit in six plate appearances as the Yankees’ designated hitter, and the Kansas City Royals swept the Yankees. Those playoff games were his last games in Major League Baseball. 

In addition to providing some pop with the bat, Soderholm profiled as a good fielding defensive third basemen, appearing on some leader lists in his career, including ninth in defensive WAR in 1975 (among all positions), first in fielding percentage in 1977 (among 3B), first in range factor in 1979 (among 3B), and 37^th in career Total Zone Runs as a third basemen right behind Josh Donaldson. Baseball-Reference lists Danny Valencia and Trevor Plouffe as two players whose careers are most similar to Eric Soderholm in all of MLB history. Baseball-Reference also lists players most similar by age, and again, other Twins show up – Willi Castro (age 26), Dave Hollins (28), and Marwin Gonzalez (29 and 30). That should give more recent Twins fans an idea of Soderholm’s abilities as a ball player.

After his baseball career, Soderholm had two separate and vastly different careers. First was as a ticket broker which was all about money, money, money. How much money could be made by reselling sports and concert tickets? That would appear to be a fast-paced, hectic career. But that life and career did not fulfill Soderholm, and he pulled a complete reversal. With his daughter's help, Soderholm turned to healing, yoga, meditation, and teaching all of that at SoderWorld, a healing arts center in the western Chicago suburb of Willowbrook. “It’s so rewarding. I’m actually more proud of building this place than I am of playing nine years in the big leagues.’’ Quite a transformation.

I’m too young to remember Eric Soderholm’s playing career. After a bit of research, I would say he appears to have been a good all-around third baseman for a handful of years, but he may be underrated in Twins history. I don’t think he’s the best third baseman in Twins history by any means, but after Harmon Killebrew, Gary Gaetti, and Corey Koskie, I could see an argument for him anywhere else in the top ten. 

Am I the only one who just doesn’t know about him? Castino, Rollins, and Cubbage are others that I am too young to remember, but I feel like I have a basic level of knowledge of their careers, which I couldn’t have said about Soderholm prior to this article. What do others remember of Eric Soderholm? Was he good? Should he be remembered more? I would love to hear any comments, recollections, or stories below.

Are you interested in Twins history? Then check out the Minnesota Twins Players Project, a community-driven project to discover and collect great information on every player to wear a Twins uniform!