Ranking the Top 50 Individual Offensive Seasons by a Minnesota Twin

With the inaugural season at Target Field next year what has been rarely mentioned is that next year will be the 50th season of Minnesota Twins baseball. Many outstanding players have put on the varied uniforms of the Twins over the years, but I felt it was worth exploring who has had the 50 greatest performances in a season at the plate as a Minnesota Twin since 1961. How did I choose to rank the players? There was only one criteria for being included on the list: a player needed 500 or more plate appearances in a season. Once that had been determined I looked at the OPS and OPS+ seasonal numbers of that player. I went back and forth on using OPS or the OPS+ stat as a way to rank players, but decided on OPS+ because it ranks a player based how he did in comparison to the league in that particular season. Those unfamiliar with OPS+ will see that an average player in the league in terms of his OPS (OBP + SLG) will get an OPS+ score of 100. If a player had a year that was 20% above the league average in OPS his OPS+ number would be 120. It is very simple and lets you look at how well a player did within his year. A player who had an OPS of .870 in 1965 with an OPS+ of 141 had a better year than Justin Morneau did in 2008 when he had an OPS of .873 and an OPS+ of 137. The player in 1965 was 41% better than league average while Morneau was a close second at 37%. The difficulty of how hard it was to hit or how easy it was to hit within a season is flushed out with the OPS+ statistic and despite Morneau having the higher OPS it was easier for Morneau to hit in the 2008 American League that it was for our unnamed player in 1965 which happens to be Tony Oliva. I'm sure others will have their opinions and differing methods of ranking so please feel free to question me and leave a comment. I will introduce each player starting off with the 50th best season and hope to get to the top OPS+ individual Twins season before the 2010 baseball schedule begins.