Joe Mauer 7th Minnesota Twin Elected to Hall of Fame
Hey number 7, Cooperstown just called!
When fans gather the third Sunday in July at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York to honor this year's inductees the seventh Minnesota Twins player will be among them. Joe Mauer will be part of the 2024 class joining Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton and Jim Leyland.
Mauer joins Harmon Killebrew (1984), Rod Carew (1991), Kirby Puckett (2001), Bert Blyleven (2011), Jim Kaat (2022) and Tony Oliva (2022) as the seventh player to go into the Hall of Fame as a Twin, as well as the third Twin (Carew and Puckett) to be elected on the first ballot. He is also just the third catcher in baseball history to be elected on the first ballot, joining Johnny Bench (1989) and Iván Rodríguez (2017).
In a release by the Minnesota Twins, Mauer was selected first overall by the Twins in the 2001 First-Year Player Draft out of St. Paul’s Cretin-Derham Hall High School and played 15 major league seasons all with the Twins, joining Tony Oliva as the only player in club history to do so. He hit .306 (2123-for-6930) in his career, with 428 doubles, 30 triples, 143 home runs, 923 RBI, 1,018 runs scored, 939 walks, a .388 on-base percentage, a .439 slugging percentage and an .827 OPS in 1,858 games. His 921 games as a catcher are the most in Twins history, with 920 coming before his move to first base in 2014.
Among all players in American League/National League history (1901-present) whose primary career position was catcher, Mauer ranks (minimum of 5,000 at-bats) first in walks and batting average on balls in play (.341), third in on-base percentage and doubles, fourth in batting average, eighth in OPS and runs created (1,187), and ninth in hits.
Mauer's number seven was retired by the club on June 15, 2019 and he was inducted into the Twins’ Hall of Fame on August 5, 2023.
LOOK: MLB history from the year you were born
Gallery Credit: Seth Berkman