A Pointless Exercise, Uncompleted

To me, one of the great mysteries of 2006 was how Joe Mauer, a guy who had an on base percentage of .429, somehow managed to avoid scoring or driving in 100 runs. Three guys who hit behind him combined for 337 RBI (Morneau: 130; Cuddyer: 109; and Hunter: 98). Mauer had 86 runs scored and 84 RBI. You’d have to assume that he was on base a good deal of the time when Morneau, Cuddyer, and Hunter were at the plate, and also that some of their RBIs were available to him when he was at bat.

The stats say that Mauer hit .367 with runners on, .360 with runners in scoring position, and .408 with runners in scoring position and two out. Those are some pretty astonishing numbers, and make it even more difficult to explain his run production.

Over the winter I was determined to go through every 2006 game to see if I could figure out who exactly crossed the plate on every run-producing play. In other words, who scored those 130 runs that Morneau drove in?

I kept getting sidetracked on this project –it was an extremely slow process– and didn’t end up getting very far. In the early going, at least, it was all very random, and the runs were pretty evenly distributed up and down the line-up, but that was when I was working with April’s games and the Twins weren’t scoring a whole lot of runs.

I’m still curious. Maybe somebody else has done this, or does it every year. Maybe this information is available somewhere. Anybody know?

Here’s some other random stuff that helps to put last year’s remarkable production in context:

In 2005 the Twins didn’t have a single player with 100 runs batted in or scored. It was even worse than that: the Twins finished that season 13th in the AL in runs, and didn’t even have a single player with eighty runs or RBI.

In 2004 it was pretty much the same story –not a single player with 100 runs or RBI. Lew Ford, of all people, led the team with 89 runs, and Torii Hunter was the club leader with 81 RBI.

Before 2006 the last Twin to drive in 100 runs was Hunter, who finished with 102 in 2003.

The last time Minnesota had a player score and drive in 100 runs was in 2001, when Corey Koskie pulled it off (100 runs, 103 RBI). Koskie’s 2001 season, in fact, was almost a mirror of Michael Cuddyer’s 2006. Koskie finished with a .276 BA, 37 doubles, and 26 home runs (and 118 strike outs and 68 walks). Here are Cuddyer’s numbers from last year: 102 R, 109 RBI, .284 BA, 41 doubles, 24 HR, 130 Ks, and 62 walks.