José Berríos won a Gold Glove, Yennier Cano finished second in MLB in holds, and Kyle Gibson earned a career-high 15 wins, four more than any Twins pitcher in 2023.
But the brightest star among the 107 former Twins who played elsewhere in 2023 wasn't a pitcher. And it wasn't a surprise, either.
Miami's Luis Arraez followed up his AL-best .316 average in 2022 with a .354 season for the Marlins this summer, the NL's highest average in 15 years. In an oddity, Arraez is the third NL batting champion in a decade to have gotten his start in Minnesota.
Michael Cuddyer hit .331 for the Rockies in 2013, earning his first and only batting title. One year later, Justin Morneau, Cuddyer's teammate in Minnesota and Colorado, claimed the batting championship by hitting .319 in Denver.
Arraez's season was the most impactful by a former Twin, as measured by his 4.9 Wins Above Replacement, since Hall of Famer David Ortiz's 5.2 WAR season in his farewell 2016 year for Boston. But though he will receive a second silver bat for his feat, he didn't get something that three former Twins earned last week: A 2023 World Series championship ring.
Mitch Garver, a 2013 Twins draftee who spent the 2017-21 seasons at Target Field, went just 2-for-19 in the World Series against Arizona, but the first hit was a home run and the second drove in the go-ahead run in the Rangers' championship-clinching Game 5 victory. Martín Pérez, who won 10 games for the 2019 Twins, got the final four outs of Texas' lone Series loss in Game 2. And Robbie Grossman, the Twins' fourth outfielder for three seasons nearly a decade ago, struck out in his lone pinch-hitting appearance for the American League champs.
That trio extended a streak of ex-Twins earning a World Series championship to seven straight seasons. And every World Series since 2010 has included at least one former Twins player on the field.
Of course, since Minnesota has utilized at least 50 players five times in the last six full seasons, there are a lot more ex-Twins than there used to be. In fact, when Tyler Duffey pitched two innings for the Cubs on the season's final day, he became the 58th ex-Twin to appear in at least one major league game, tying a record set one year earlier.