Don Mincher, who played 13 seasons in the majors and made a pair of All-Star teams as a slugging first baseman, passed away last night at age 73 in Alabama.
Mincher served as president of the Double-A Southern League until retiring last year due to health problems and was previously general manager of the league’s Huntsville team.
Signed by the White Sox in 1956, he was traded to the Senators (who later became the Twins) along with Earl Battey for Roy Sievers in 1960. Six years later the Twins traded Mincher to the Angels in a deal for Dean Chance and a couple years after that the Seattle Pilots snagged him in the expansion draft.
Mincher’s raw numbers (200 homers, .798 OPS) don’t look spectacular by today’s standards because he spent most of his career in the extremely low-scoring 1960s, but he produced an adjusted OPS+ of 127 in 4,725 plate appearances. To put that in some context, Don Mattingly had a 127 OPS+ in 7,722 plate appearances.
