Twinkie Town What if? What if Joe Mauer didn’t get concussed

Ah yes, lets relitigate the case of our 23-million dollar doubles-hitting first baseman. Or more precisely, look into the alternate history of what could have happened for the Twins franchise. This is the first in what I hope to make a sporadic series of posts, that appear whenever I get a few minutes.

First, the background. Set the wayback machine to August, 2013. “We’re The Millers” was the top movie in theatres, Barack Obama was campaigning for reelection, Edward Snowden and the Boston Marathon were still in the headlines, and Lance Armstrong fessed up to being a dirty rotten cheater. Depending on your musical tastes, you were probably grooving to Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke, Cruise by Florida Georgia Line, or Royals by Lorde.

Meanwhile, on August 19th, beloved Twins catcher and face-of-the-franchise Joe Mauer took a foul tip off his mask that changed everything. Mauer suffered a concussion that impacted his play for at least a couple more years and forced him to move to first base.

In order to make room at first for the perennial all-star and hometown hero, the Twins moved on from the other M&M boy, Justin Morneau. While Morneau has now become a large part of the team after retirement, including stints in the broadcast booth with Dick Bremer, he was traded to Pittsburgh for Alex Presley and a PTBNL that turned into Duke Welker.

Had the Twins never acquired Welker or Presley, well, that wouldn’t have changed a damn thing, as neither did anything noteworthy in the Twin Cities, with Presley being granted free agency after the 2013 season, and Welker never even making it to the majors after being traded.

Morneau, meanwhile, was still recovering from concussion symptoms of his own, but would play until 2016, mostly with Colorado, where he led the league in batting average in 2014 and drew MVP votes. If the Twins had kept him a few years, it also would have meant we never saw this abomination.

Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

While Morneau finished his career as a DH, in 2016 he still outhit Miguel Sano (the Twins primary option in the position) by 30 points AND struck out 126 less times (in half the plate appearances, but SHHHHH!!! I’m telling this story.)

Meanwhile, the Twins turned to the perfectly reasonable but light-hitting Kurt Suzuki to fill their catching void.

2014 was also the final season of the Ron Gardenhire era, as the long-time manager was let go after an absolute disaster that surely would have been partly mitigated by another season of the prime-era M&M boys.