Greatest Twins Teams of All Time: 1987

Overview
Minnesota was wandering. For what felt like 40 years, the Twins navigated the baseball landscape with little success, only finding desert between occasional small oases. Their last great team—the 1970 group that fell to the Baltimore dynasty—might as well have been in a different century; the last 15 seasons bore a handful of above-average years along with the kind of absolutely dreadful baseball they don’t recommend for young children or for those with a sensitive disposition. 

But losing stops eventually. Talent always finds a way. Homeborn and homegrown All-Star Kent Hrbek has been a thumping force in the lineup since 1982, providing a legitimate power threat to a team known for a dearth of muscle. Frank Viola, who once led all of MLB in earned runs allowed, flashed potential; he finished sixth in the Cy Young vote in 1984. And, critically, the Twins had a true star, a player as great as his popularity. His constant presence on All-Star rosters and MVP voter ballots could only be matched by his television appearances and iconic, broad smile. Minnesota had Kirby Puckett.

Somehow, those three—along with full-time first-year manager Tom Kelly—helped carry a ragtag assortment of complimentary pieces to the team’s first World Series victory—and one of the most unlikely championship wins in recent history.

Lineup
The 1987 Twins offense was top-heavy but otherwise solid. They were 16th in MLB in batting average, 15th in on-base percentage, and 8th in slugging. That led to an offense 10th in runs—a number made a little less impressive in the context of a 26-team league. 

Nonetheless, there were bright spots: the aforementioned Hrbek turned into another excellent season in his remarkably consistent career, slashing .285/.389/.545 with a career-high 34 homers. Puckett wasn’t far behind; his OPS also crossed the .900 threshold. Puckett preferred a more democratic hit-oriented approach than his first-base counterpart, and the strategy fueled the first of four years leading the league in hits. That's not to say he was a slap-happy weakling; the 5'8" Puckett found a power stroke the previous season, lapping his previous career-high in homers by nearly eightfold while still hanging on to the batting average that made him fascinating in the first place. Tom Brunansky and Gary Gaetti bashed 32 and 31 home runs, respectively, giving the team a trio of boppers with at least 30 bombs in the season. 

The rest of the lineup… fluctuated. Leadoff duties were mainly split between Dan Gladden and Al Newman, neither of whom hit particularly well that season. Tom Nieto started as the everyday catcher before giving way to a Tim Laudner/Sal Butera combo of adroit defenders and painful hitters. The Roy Smalley and Gene Larkin DH duo proved ineffective enough to necessitate an early September move for former MVP Don Baylor one year before he called an end to his career. Greg Gagne, Randy Bush, and Steve Lombardozzi rounded Kelly’s unusual collection of batters. 

All in all, the team smoked the 8th-most homers in MLB, mainly thanks to their outstanding quartet of sluggers.

Pitching
Frank, Bert, and pray for rain isn’t a perfectly precise way to describe the starting rotation—Les Straker deserves credit for pitching at an above-average level—but… there’s a reason why 12 different arms earned a start in 1987. Even the 2023 Twins, a team nestled in the heart of the use-once-and-throw-away meta of pitching, only relied on 10 starters.

Viola was a tremendous ace; his Cy Young wouldn’t come until the following season, but his ERA+ of 159 was slightly better than the mark that earned him the award. What changed for the inconsistent but talented lefty? Bryan Lake, writing for SABR, explains that “Viola watched how his teammate, veteran righthander Bert Blyleven, handled adversity without changing his disposition, even when he gave up mammoth home runs. It made [him] think, “Why don’t I just take a lesson from this man?””*

When combined with a tweaked changeup, Viola laid waste to AL batters, striking out 197 hitters over 251 ⅔ innings.

Then there was Blyleven. The prodigal son returned to Minnesota in 1985, and while he was merely good, no longer superhuman, he could still gobble frames at an astounding rate. The effectiveness came with one downside: homers. The same curveball that eventually carried him to the hall of fame had a nasty habit of hanging out in the heart of the zone; Bert allowed 96 home runs combined between 1986 and 1987, with an unthinkable 50 of those homers leaving in 1986 alone—a major-league record. His 1987 season is 4th. 

This is where it gets bleak. Straker was serviceable, but Mike Smithson continued his multiple-year slide down the effectiveness slope, and Joe Niekro—when not getting caught for using an emery board—got knocked around with ease. The situation’s darkness necessitated a mid-season deal for another 42-year-old: Steve Carlton. “Lefty” would cruise into the Hall of Fame in a few years as one of the best starters to ever take a baseball mound, but in 1987, his stuff had as much bite as a platypus. His addition did not clarify the mess. 

The bullpen wasn’t better. An 8th-place finish in the Cy Young race masked the fact that All-Star Jeff Reardon had one of the worst years of his career; he just barely notched an above-average ERA while blowing 10 of his 41 save opportunities. Veterans George Frazier and Keith Atherton added ancillary support in the middle innings.

Perhaps Minnesota’s best relief weapon, though, was Juan Berenguer, aka Señor Smoke. The 32-year-old Berenguer joined the team the prior offseason, already laboring under “journeyman” pretenses. His Swiss-army versatility allowed Kelly to use him in any inning, or in any situation. That success begat a bloated September workload, where Berenguer totaled 19 ⅓ frames as the Twins frantically fought for a playoff spot. His 4.66 ERA wasn’t dominant, but the team went 8-5 in those games, providing just enough support to send the squad to the postseason.

Postseason
The Twins won only 85 games. Four other teams would have topped them in the East. None did so in the West. Thank God for mediocrity.

The division win set Minnesota up with a match against the Sparky Anderson Tigers three years removed from their brutal decimation of baseball’s very landscape, when they started the season 35-5, and never wavered through a near-perfect 7-1 playoff route. They weren’t quite as great in 1987, but they were still damn good: Alan Trammell finished 2nd in the MVP race with the most brilliant season his hall-of-fame career produced, Jack Morris was still a consistent All-Star and Cy Young threat, and armed with newcomer Doyle Alexander—who went 9-0 with a 1.53 ERA after Detroit acquired him—the Tigers were formidable and frightening. 

And the Twins beat them 4-1 in a series that wasn’t ever close. 

Gary Gaetti belted a pair of identical homers off Alexander in a Game One victory, becoming the first player to hit homers in his first two postseason at-bats, and Bert Blyleven covered 7 ⅓ innings in a Game Two win.** Detroit exacted revenge off Reardon late in Game Three, but Minnesota cleaned up business in Game Four and Five to send the team to their first World Series in 22 years.

Their opponent? Perhaps the team that best embodied baseball in the 1980s—the Whitey Herzog Cardinals.

In an era of steals and defense, St. Louis ran the dominant strategy to perfection, unleashing hell on the bases with a dynamic trio of Vince Coleman, Ozzie Smith, and Willie McGee. Coleman alone stole an unimaginable 109 bags in 1987. Pitchers were likely better off just allowing him to stroll to 3rd base. Once those men reached base, it was up to the perpetually underrated Jack Clark and future MVP Terry Pendleton to knock them in. They usually did exactly that. 

Their pitching staff wasn’t the greatest, but Danny Cox, Greg Mathews, Bob Forsch, Joe Magrane, and John Tudor usually kept it close enough for dynamite closer Todd Worrell to shut down games with ease.

Games One and Two were lopsided Twins victories. The team drew from the Metrodome’s primal energy all season, absorbing the raucous vigor and jubilant spirits of their fans to fuel a goliath 56-25 home record during the regular season. The World Series, evidently, was no different; Minnesota ambushed St. Louis’ starters early to give the team a dominating 2-0 series lead.

The Cardinals were not done: they bested Minnesota in the next three games, oscillating between late-inning squeakers and a crushing Game Four evisceration of Viola to suddenly take the series lead themselves, 3-2. 

And—just as they did all year—the Twins used their Metrodome mojo to fight back. Tim McCarver astutely noted before Minnesota's return home that he couldn't "really think of a team since the 1961 Yankees who [had] more of a home-field advantage than the Minnesota Twins."*** The series may have pointed towards a St. Louis advantage, but make no mistake: the magic, unseen forces that moved baseball were set to halt their momentum and give the home team the edge. 

Hrbek blasted an iconic grand slam to center in Game Six to give his team more than enough insurance to fend off elimination for one more day. Then, the lefty ace they relied on all year turned in one final masterpiece: a Game 7 performance only topped by Morris four years later.*** He suffocated the Cardinals over eight dominant innings as Minnesota sprinkled enough runs throughout the game to finally claim the first World Series win for the team since they became the Twins in 1961.

Viola was an easy choice for the World Series MVP.

Concluding Thoughts
To start: yes, this team was lucky. There’s no defending a squad that was outscored in the regular season and only got their shot because the rest of the AL West decided to take a gap year 

However, I think it would be irresponsible to call their playoff run a product of fortune. The “two aces and power bats” strategy has been a proven winner throughout the years. Viola and Blyleven started nine of the 12 games they played, making the Niekros and Carltons who dragged down their regular season stats irrelevant. The only real shock is that it was Steve Lombardozzi, of all people, who led the hitters in championship WPA for the series, somehow improving their odds by 12.98%. He barely hit in the regular season but clocked a .412 batting average in the World Series! That’s baseball.

This was probably the hardest team for me to rank. They forced me to dig at and interrogate the concept of “greatest” in a way that no other team really did. For as good as other, more winning squads were, some just weren’t as set up to win in the playoffs as the 87 team was—mainly because they lacked a true game-altering ace like Frank Viola. Anyway, I think this is the correct ranking, but I easily see this being the team that sparks the most debate. Perhaps that's a good thing. It’s no fun if we think we fully understand what we see.

"Two aces and a powerful lineup, just enough Jeff Reardon to overcome a Cardinals team with nothing left." -Hans Birkeland

"This was an 85-win team with a negative run differential. Magic? Most definitely. Perhaps the No. 1 team/season in terms of pure enjoyment." -Tom Froemming

"Arguably the most surprising World Series-winning team ever. This is when Frank Viola was a true Cy Young candidate (he eventually won in '88). This is in contention with the Bomba Squad in being the most fun team in Twins history, and they have a World Series trophy to show for it." -Cody Schoenmann

Previous Entries
#10 - 2010
#9 - 2023
#8 - 2002
#7 - 1970
#6 - 2019
#5 - 2006
#4 - 1969
Honorable Mentions                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Sources

Lake, Bryan, "https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/frank-viola/," SABR, 2020.

Halsed, Alex, "100 Things Twins Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die," Triumph Books, Chicago, 2016.

Gleeman, Aaron, "The Big 50: The Men and Moments That Made the Minnesota Twins," Triumph Books, Chicago, 2018.