Well, the people have spoken -- and a lot of them at that. More than 300 comments poured in from yesterday's post asking for your choices as to the 50 worst Twins players of all-time. Most of you took it either seriously (in a good way) or humorously (also in a good way). A small minority were offended; let us reiterate: these are major leaguers who accomplished a lot to get as far as they did.
Hopefully, a list like this won't be viewed in poor taste. Also, remember that some of these folks really weren't all that bad and probably did better things other places. (Rich Becker, for instance, looks a lot better on paper than we remember him. Some might even say his 1996 season was actually better than decent). Many of these players were perhaps doomed by unreasonable expectations or simply ran out of gas at the wrong time. In addition, remember that cup-of-coffee guys received less consideration than those who had a real chance to make an impact. (We also ultimately refrained from putting any current Twins on the list, though the list already seems skewed toward the 1980s and later). And finally, remember, too, that this is also timed in conjunction with a true celebration of the 50 best Twins, which will be announced on FSN during an hourlong pregame show Friday night.
With that said, we've waded through all the comments so you don't necessarily have to do so. After looking at all the suggestions, we have done our best to pick what seem to be your top choices -- either by multiple mention, persuasive argument, voting on specific comments or plain old simple, "yep, he belongs" logic. We didn't want to stretch to get to 50, so we stopped at 42. Here we go, in absolutely no particular order, the people's choices:
Eddie Bane, Rondell White, Scott Stahoviak, Rob Wilfong, Willie Norwood, Hosken Powell, Scott Aldred, Bret Boone, Lenny Faedo, Rich Robertson, Terry Felton, David McCarty, Dan Serafini, Sean Bergman, Scott Klingenbeck, Ron Davis, Fred Manrique, Bombo Rivera, Houston Jiminez, Tom Herr, Mark Davidson, Butch Huskey, Jackie Hernandez, Pat Putnam, Pat Mahomes, Tony Batista, Frankie Rodriguez, Willie Banks, Matt Walbeck, David West, Adam Johnson, Terry Tiffee, Dave Stevens, Brad Havens, Carlos Pulido, Steve Carlton, Phil Nevin, Jose Parra, Joe Lis, Danny Walton, Louie Gomez, Bob Gorinski.
Let us never speak of this again ...
