Minnesota Twins
Minnesota Twins, American professional baseball team based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that plays in the American League (AL). The Twins originally played in Washington, D.C. (1901–60), and were known as the Senators before relocating to Minneapolis in 1961. The franchise has won three World Series titles (1924, 1987, and 1991) and six AL pennants.
The Washington Senators were founded in 1901 as one of the eight original American League franchises. The early Senator teams were extremely unsuccessful, posting some of the lowest winning percentages in baseball history en route to last- or second-to-last-place finishes in nine consecutive seasons between 1903 and 1911. This run led one newspaperman to famously sum up the team with the bon mot, “Washington—first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.” The lone bright spot for these Senator squads was future Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson, who amassed a cumulative 2.17 earned run average over the course of his 21-year major league career, which was spent entirely in Washington. Johnson was joined by slugger Goose Goslin in 1921, and the two led the Senators to their first pennant win and the World Series championship in 1924, a title that was won in dramatic fashion over the New York Giants in the 12th inning of the seventh game of the series. The Senators returned to the World Series again in 1925 and 1933, but they lost in both appearances. In 1954 the Senators added one of baseball’s all-time great power hitters, Harmon Killebrew, but he was not enough to revive fan interest in a franchise that had returned to an annual spot at the bottom of the AL standings since its last playoff berth in 1933. The Senators were relocated to the burgeoning baseball market of Minneapolis in 1961.
Renamed the Twins, the team quickly became contenders in their new home, advancing to the World Series in 1965, with outfielder Tony Oliva and pitcher Jim Kaat joining Killebrew as the team’s stars. Minnesota signed future seven-time AL batting champion Rod Carew in 1967. Carew won the AL Rookie of the Year award in his first season with Minnesota, and he, Oliva, and Killebrew led the Twins to AL Central Division titles in 1969 and 1970. The Twins returned to mediocrity for the remainder of the 1970s and the early 1980s, but in 1987 first-year manager Tom Kelly guided the Twins to a seven-game World Series victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.
The Twins participated in an even more eventful “Fall Classic” in 1991 with the Atlanta Braves, who, like the Twins, had finished in last place in their division the previous year, which made both World Series participants co-owners of the first “worst-to-first” turnarounds in modern baseball history. The World Series featured four games that ended with a game-winning hit by the home team. Facing elimination, the Twins won games six and seven in extra innings, the former highlighted by Kirby Puckett’s 11th-inning home run and the latter featuring a remarkably durable 10-inning complete-game shutout performance by Minnesota’s starting pitcher, Jack Morris.
In 2001 the Twins—who were one of Major League Baseball’s least-profitable franchises—were one of the two teams (with the Montreal Expos) proposed by commissioner Bud Selig for elimination from the major leagues in an effort to raise revenue throughout the sport. A 2002 court order forced the Twins to play out their lease at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, which effectively ended the threat of contraction and gave the franchise time to plan for the construction of a more-profitable baseball-only ballpark (Target Field, which opened in 2010).
The Twins began a streak of three straight AL Central Division titles in 2002, and they won their fourth divisional championship of the early 21st century in 2006, but the team failed to advance to the World Series on each occasion. After a two-year postseason absence, the Twins won another division title in 2009, only to lose in the first round of the playoffs. The team again took the AL Central championship in 2010, but its play quickly fell off, and the Twins suffered numerous last-place divisional finishes in the following seasons. The team reached a notable low in 2016 by finishing 59–103, which was the franchise’s worst record since it moved to Minnesota.
The following year the Twins completed one of the greatest major league turnarounds of all time, winning 85 games to qualify for a spot in the AL Wild Card Game. In doing so the team became the first franchise to follow a season with at least 100 losses with a berth in the playoffs. Minnesota regressed slightly in 2018, winning 78 games but finishing well outside playoff contention. In 2019 the Twins broke out, winning 101 games (the most victories in a season for the franchise since 1965) and setting a major league record by hitting 307 home runs. However, Minnesota was again swept in its first postseason series. In the 2020 season, which was shortened because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Twins’ playoff futility continued as they were swept in the Wild Card round, bringing their streak of consecutive playoff losses over the years to 18, the longest such streak in the history of North American major team sports.