The Morning After: Still Feeling Good About All That Joe Mauer Love Last Night?

Ya hit it right on the head! In ALL of baseball, if Joe is worth it, then who is? Can’t wait to hear the negative response’s to your well put question. Who is then?

There’s no continuum here—it’s one thing or the other; either you step up and get it done or you don’t. What sort of franchise are you if you don’t?

There is immense risk here, no question. But we aren’t talking about merely a great player here; Mauer is history. His career is potentially unique—there’s non-negligible chance that he winds up the best catcher in the history of the game.

Given the huge advantages he gives you on the field, and the historic nature of his career, you live with the chance that it doesn’t work out. The alternative, letting him walk, guarantees that it doesn’t work out.

I started a slow clap when i was done reading this post. But then sheepishly realized that i was in my office and would attract attention to the fact that i am doing no work. And the champagne hangover that i have is killing me. why couldn’t this have been done on a saturday.

Like anything, be it a car or a tv, you get what you pay for. You can stand there and split hairs and maybe ultimately save a few bucks by buying the Samsung instead of Sony, but in reality the Samsung may not be that much better than the junk brand that is $200 cheaper. You never go wrong when you go the extra distance for quality. Jeter’s been worth it, as have A-Rod and Tex so far, the best comparables. One could argue against Helton being worth it, but he is probably the best comparable, and look what he just did to help make his contract more hometown friendly. A lot of the other big contracts were examples of desperate teams over-bidding for Samsungs.

To beat a dead horse: Split hairs between the Pontiac Grand Prix and the Chevy Camaro all you want, but if you have a chance for a Ferrari, there is no comparison.

It’s kind of funny, because the more I read general (e.g.: national) responses to the Mauer signing, the more I come to think that believing that the signing was a good thing is the contrarian view.

It is possible to argue that Mauer wasn’t critical to the Twins’ chances of being competitive — after all, look at 2004, when Mauer blew out his knee in game two of the season, played only about a quarter of the full season, and was replaced by Henry Blanco; the Twins still won the division. A lineup with Morneau third, Cuddyer fourth, and Kubel fifth isn’t going to be weak, especially if Span continues his heroics at the top of the order.

Ultimately, though, the question is, do you or do you not want Joe Mauer on the team. (Hoping he gets hurt again and can thus be signed as ‘damaged goods’ is an option I won’t bother analyzing.) Somebody is going to give Mauer this contract. Either you do it, and demonstrate to your fans that you’re serious about all the rhetoric that went into the stadium push and the past few seasons of relative frugality, or you don’t do it and reveal your hypocrisy. It’s something of a relief and a surprise that the Twins’ management decided to go with the former, at least from my perspective, but I won’t complain.

On the flip side of the coin, I can pretty much guarantee that, come 2017, we’ll probably be ruing that we’re paying Mauer $23 million when we could probably get someone playing as well as he is (at that point, anyway) for less. ‘History’ shows that Kirby Puckett received over $13 million in 1996 and 1997 — and if you don’t recall Puckett actually playing in 1996 and 1997, you’re not wrong. That money could have gone a long way to improve a Twins’ club that was among the worst of the Pohlad era, and it’s entirely possible that those days will come again, even before Mauer’s shiny new contract has expired.

But if you don’t do the deal, you already know what the result is — none of the rest of your players will believe that you’re in it for the long haul, and your fanbase will have to sit back and watch the guy who could have been the face of your franchise go be a superstar for somebody else’s team (see Carlos Beltran, Johnny Damon, and any number of other former Royals over the past decade).

I’m going to think of this contract as if I’d taken out a second mortgage to spend two months touring Europe. Sure, I’ll be playing for it years after the trip, but the experiences and the memories will last a lifetime.

Dang, I think this is the most positive I’ve been about the Twins in years. Hope I didn’t just jinx ’em…

Might be the case—poor hitting by catchers is often excused by the fact they have to spend so much time preparing with the pitchers.

If Mauer does have to change positions (Ivan Rodriguez and Jorge Posada have managed to stick it out, with decent results—and both are older than Mauer will be when his contract runs out) one could suppose he will become a better hitter, and, if so, his decline in defensive value may well be offset by his increased offense. Not that he wouldn’t make a damn fine defensive first baseman.

At any rate, because the salary is evenly dispersed across the length of the contract, Mauer is giving an effective discount in today’s dollars but will perhaps make it up in the later years. Kind of like buying a car on payments—they are the same in year 5 as year 1, but the car obviously won’t be as new and shiny.