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1968 Minnesota Twins season

Field	Value
name	Minnesota Twins
season	1968
league	American League
ballpark	Metropolitan Stadium
city	Bloomington, Minnesota
record
divisional_place	7th
owners	Calvin Griffith (majority owner, with Thelma Griffith Haynes)
general_managers	Calvin Griffith
managers	Cal Ermer
television	WTCN-TV
radio	830 WCCO AM
(Herb Carneal, Halsey Hall, Merle Harmon)

(Herb Carneal, Halsey Hall, Merle Harmon) |}} The **1968 Minnesota Twins season **was the 8th season for the Minnesota Twins franchise in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, their 8th season at Metropolitan Stadium and the 68th overall in the American League. The team finished 79–83, seventh in the American League.

Offseason

January 27, 1968: Eric Soderholm was drafted by the Twins in the 1st round (1st pick) of the secondary phase of the 1968 Major League Baseball draft.

Regular season

Leadoff batter César Tovar sparked the offense, finishing second in the AL with 167 hits and third with 89 runs. Tony Oliva was third in the AL with a .289 batting average. Harmon Killebrew had 17 HR and 40 RBI at the All-Star break, but was injured in the game and missed the second half of the season.

It took until their eighth season for the Twins to get no-hit and then it happened profoundly, as their first opposing no-hitter was the perfect game thrown by Oakland's Jim "Catfish" Hunter on May 8 in Oakland. Hunter struck out eleven, and drove in three of his team's four runs.

A first for the Twins: on July 11, Rick Renick played his first-ever major league game, at shortstop. In his first big-league at bat, he homered. The run came off Detroit Tigers pitcher Mickey Lolich. Renick is the first Twins player to accomplish the feat, later to be joined in history by Dave McKay (1975), Gary Gaetti (1981) and Andre David (1984). They all were then joined in 2015 by Eddie Rosario, who hit a homer not only in his first at bat, but on the first major-league pitch thrown to him.

Three Twins made the All-Star Game: first baseman Harmon Killebrew, second baseman Rod Carew, and outfielder Tony Oliva.

On September 22, utility player César Tovar played all nine positions, an inning each, against the Oakland Athletics. Duplicating the feat that Bert Campaneris had performed three years prior, Tovar topped Campy by starting as pitcher and allowing no hits or runs, for a 0.00 earned run average. In the inning, the first man to face Tovar was Campaneris, who fouled out. Tovar then struck out slugger Reggie Jackson.

Four Twins won 10 or more games: Dean Chance (16–16), Jim Kaat (14–12) Jim Merritt (12–16), Dave Boswell (10–13). Pitcher Jim Kaat won his seventh Gold Glove. Al Worthington led the American League with 18 saves.

1,143,257 fans attended Twins games, the fourth highest total in the American League.

Season standings

Record vs. opponents

Roster

1968 Minnesota Twins
Roster
Pitchers

Player stats

	= Indicates team leader

Batting

Starters by position

Note: Pos = Position; G = Games played; AB = At bats; H = Hits; Avg. = Batting average; HR = Home runs; RBI = Runs batted in

Pos	G	AB	H	Avg.	HR	RBI
C	135	380	82	.216	8	39
1B	100	295	62	.210	17	40
2B	127	461	126	.273	1	42
SS	83	199	35	.176	2	17
3B	157	613	167	.272	6	47
LF	145	469	116	.247	22	52
CF	140	488	138	.283	7	52
RF	128	470	136	.289	18	68

Other batters

Note: G = Games played; AB = At bats; H = Hits; Avg. = Batting average; HR = Home runs; RBI = Runs batted in

G	AB	H	Avg.	HR	RBI
126	332	86	.259	4	28
97	229	56	.245	1	22
104	227	42	.185	1	13
93	203	49	.241	6	30
59	118	29	.246	0	9
63	108	26	.241	0	9
70	106	22	.208	0	8
42	97	21	.216	3	13
22	76	17	.224	5	8
24	45	5	.111	0	2
12	35	4	.114	1	2
11	34	7	.206	0	1

Pitching

Starting pitchers

Note: G = Games pitched; IP = Innings pitched; W = Wins; L = Losses; ERA = Earned run average; SO = Strikeouts

G	IP	W	L	ERA	SO
43	292.0	16	16	2.53	234
38	238.1	12	16	3.25	181
30	208.0	14	12	2.94	130
34	190.0	10	13	3.32	143
2	11.1	1	1	4.76	4
1	1.0	0	0	0.00	1

Other pitchers

Note: G = Games pitched; IP = Innings pitched; W = Wins; L = Losses; ERA = Earned run average; SO = Strikeouts

G	IP	W	L	ERA	SO
32	139.0	8	6	2.27	69
28	61.2	4	1	3.50	36
8	29.2	2	1	2.43	18
7	16.0	0	1	1.69	11
3	10.2	0	1	1.69	6

Relief pitchers

Note: G = Games pitched; W = Wins; L = Losses; SV = Saves; ERA = Earned run average; SO = Strikeouts

G	W	L	SV	ERA	SO
54	4	5	18	2.71	57
66	8	7	6	3.10	65
45	0	3	2	2.74	41

Farm system

LEAGUE CHAMPIONS: Orlando, St. Cloud

Notes

References

[https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/soderer01.shtml Eric Soderholm] at ''Baseball-Reference''
(February 2019). "Minnesota Twins". Baseball-Reference.com.

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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