How much playoff experience do the Twins have on their roster? For many years, it has been a very low number. However, the past couple years of acquisitions have added some very experienced veterans.
Adding up all the playoff games played by every player on the roster, we find that the Twins, as a whole, have a whopping 267 playoff games under their collective belt. This includes 4 World Series rings and 8 runner-up finishes. The front office has clearly done an excellent job complementing the promising young core they inherited with experienced veteran contributors.
The experience is also spread throughout the roster very well. In the lineup, you can find Nelson Cruz (44 games, 2x runner-up), Marwin Gonzalez (33 games, 1 ring), Josh Donaldson (39 games), and Alex Avila (35 games, 1x runner-up) among the younger guys who range from 0-4 playoff games played. In the bullpen, stalwarts Tyler Clippard (14 games, 1x runner-up) and Sergio Romo (29 games, 3 rings) reside. Lastly, in the rotation, Dodgers imports Rich Hill (13 games) and Kenta Maeda (24 games) are both 2x runner-up’s.
How does this compare to the rest of the AL?
The White Sox have a combined 108 games, all coming from 7 players. They have 2 rings and 2 runner-up finishes among them. The Cleveland squad, due to their recent run of success, come in at 144 games played, including a total of 1 ring and 5 runner-up’s. However, only 14 of these games come from pitchers, including no World Series appearances. The island of misfit toys (Tampa Bay) has a collective 78 games spread amongst their young guns and cast-offs, including 1 World Series ring. The young Blue Jays add up to 90 games, with 3 rings and 2 runner-up finishes. Billy Beane’s Oakland A’s have 72 games spread pretty evenly about the entire roster, along with 2 World Series titles.
Lastly, we have the blue bloods. The Yankees and Astros. Regularly making it deep into the postseason with largely the same cores for the past few years, these teams have a boatload of experience. The Yankees come out to a whopping 333 postseason games, with 3 collective rings (less than the Twins lol) and 1 runner-up. On the other hand, the Asterisks have more playoff experience in their little pinky than any other AL team has in their entirety. Adding up to an ungodly 470 postseason games, the Astros roster is stacked with players young and old who have made multiple deep playoff runs. Boasting 10 collective rings and another 19 runner-up finishes. Whether legitimate or not, the Astros are the AL’s postseason experience king.
However, the Twins do stack up nicely with the rest of the league, coming in second in rings and runner-up finishes, and third in total games. Let’s see if it plays to their advantage come the postseason.
Methodology: Manually added up playoff games of each projected playoff roster player for each team using baseballreference.com. All results are close, not guaranteed to be exact.