{"id":502679,"date":"2026-01-02T13:30:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T13:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/502679\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T13:30:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T13:30:12","slug":"twins-flashback-1966-twinkie-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/502679\/","title":{"rendered":"Twins Flashback: 1966 | Twinkie Town"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Happy New Year Twinkie Town! With the calendar flipped to 2026, I\u2019ll be periodically checking in on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.twinkietown.com\/minnesota_twins_history\/49767\/mlb-minnesota-twins-2006-luis-castillo-alexi-casilla-tony-batista-rondell-white-dennys-reyes-ruben-sierra\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2006<\/a> &amp; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.twinkietown.com\/minnesota_twins_history\/49996\/mlb-minnesota-twins-2016-aaron-hicks-john-ryan-murphy-josmil-pinto-juan-centeno-byung-ho-park\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2016<\/a> campaigns this 365-cycle. But before that, we have a few one-off anniversaries\u2014beginning with the Twins\u2019 AL title defense 60 years ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Offensively, tippy-top stalwarts Harmon Killebrew (39 HR, 110 RBI, 103 BB, .281 BA, 157 OPS+) &amp; Tony Oliva (191 H, Gold Glove Award) showed no champagne hangover\u2014but that couldn\u2019t be applied to the rest of the lumber-wielders\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">All told, a slightly-below-average team 95 OPS+.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Fortunately, the pitching picked up the slack.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Led by Jim Kaat\u2019s newfound ace-dom\u201425-13, 2.75 ERA, 41 GS, 19 CG, 3 SHO, 304.2 IP, 131 ERA+\u2014the likes of Mudcat Grant (111 ERA+), Jim Perry (142 ERA+), &amp; Dave Boswell (115 ERA+) were also solid starters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Add up the cunning contributions from Al Worthington (147 ERA+) &amp; Pete Cimino (124 ERA+) out of the crib and the team 116 ERA+ was the squad\u2019s strong point.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">All told, this led to a respectable 89-73 record in 1966. Alas, \u201crespectable\u201d didn\u2019t make the World Series in this era before divisions or playoffs. So, the MN boys of summer had to settle for 2nd place behind the 97-63 Baltimore Orioles\u2014powered by a generational MVP season (198 OPS+) from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2xzeCfKEEpE&amp;t=35s\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Frank Robinson<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Hovering around .500 (17.5 GB) at the end of July, the Twins made a 21-11 August &amp; 17-10 Sept\/Oct push to cut the deficit to 9 GB\u2014but ultimately ran out of time to catch the Orange Birds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">There were of course still some standout moments along route \u201866\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">While not ending with the national fanfare of \u201865, this season proved the Minnesota Twins were no one-hit wonders. Their mix of hitting &amp; pitching was strong enough to compete with AL stalwarts year-in and year-out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Happy New Year Twinkie Town! With the calendar flipped to 2026, I\u2019ll be periodically checking in on the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,822,60,3190,4,148,40788],"class_list":{"0":"post-502679","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-twins","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-minnesota-twins","11":"tag-minnesotatwins","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-twins","14":"tag-twins-history-and-nostalgia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115825753091386498","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}