Ten years ago, the Twins signed star catcher Joe Mauer to the fourth-largest deal in baseball history. MLBTR’s Jeff Todd explains why the contract made tons of sense at the time, in today’s video.
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Nice Video. Joe’s contract pre concussion would have been a value from a player’s standpoint. On the business side; I don’t believe a team can tie up 25% of their payroll on one player. This in my opinion is what hamstrung the front office and you started seeing the roster start to change because the Twins could no long afford the Cuddyer’s, Hunter’s and Morneau’s, ect.
The Twins didn’t tie up 25% of their max payroll in Mauer. The ceiling on the Twins payroll when they signed Mauer and across the years that followed was in the 110-130MM range. Somewhere in the 18-20% range.
Not sure where your perspective on the Cuddyer’s Hunter’s and Morneau’s is coming from as the Twins actually had precious little talent from 2011+ and they were never going to be the Yankees or Red Sox and go out and blow a $200MM annual payroll to compensate for an utter failure to develop talent.
Mauer is a HOFer in my book. Even if he retired after the concussions rather than moving to first base, he’s still a top 10 catcher of all time.
I disagree
2123 career hits only
143 career Hrs
Only 2 of 14 full seasons with Ops over 880 (Edwin Enarcarncion has 7 in the same 14 year span)
.827 lifetime Ops
By all means he seems like a great guy but hes nowhere near Hall of Fame material if you go by the numbers
Yes but he did all that as a catcher, Encarnacion is a DH. He’s still a borderline candidate at least.
All would be quiet a stretch
885/1470 is 60%
So 40% of his games played were not at C
So….defense isn’t taken into account?
No because Jeter’s in the HOF for having over 3,000 hits* and he is one of the worst defenders in baseball history. He also has character issues like cheating on taxes claiming Yankee Stadium was in Florida. He could’ve taken steroids since his buddies Arod and Nomar got busted and his head did look bigger over time.
A .976 fielding percentage for a SS is pretty average at worst in my opinion, but that aside, he excelled at the plate so much as to make up for any perceived shortcomings on defense. Mauer was well above average at the plate and excellent defensively. Let’s compare Mauer’s numbers to a consensus Hall Of Famer Ozzie Smith. Smith had a lifetime avg of .262 and only hit 28 HRs in his career. But he was rightfully a first ballot HOFer Bc of his defense.
I’m not even going to entertain the last part of your argument. Steroids, really? Steroids don’t help you hit the ball. A .310 lifetime avg from a guy who was never under suspicion. You must be one of these guys who thinks everyone who played from the mid 90’s to 2010 should be excluded from the Hall. Such a reach it tells me you have no actual facts to base an argument on. Sorry, you’re being sent back to the commenting minor leagues. You need a little more seasoning before you’re ready to comment with the big boys.
But EE is a terrible comparison. He played most of his career as a first baseman or DH. He sits at 36 career WAR compared to Mauer’s 55.
Mauer sits at 7th in career WAR for catchers. In 10 seasons behind the plate he was a six time all star, 3 time gold glover, an MVP, and finished in the top 10 three other times.
There have been 6 seasons where catchers won a batting title and Mauer owns three of them.
I mean I just picked a guy off the top of my head to show the 880 barrier for OPS isnt that difficult – Mike Piazza cleared it 11 times Pudge 5 times
No denying hes great and was cut short but his numbers arent Hall numbers
2 catchers known for taking roids…
I agree that Pudge and Pizza juiced.
Why are you comparing a 3B/DH to a catcher?
hmm catcher that played 40% of his inns somewhere else? Doesnt seem like a true catcher at that point does it but dem just the facts I guess?
In today’s market there’s no way he would’ve ever gotten that big of a contract.
Yeah he would have. Probably would have gotten more AAV.
I love joe mauer but I just don’t think he was good enough for long enough to be a HOFer. Injuries robbed him of the chance at the hall but he did everything he could to make it close.
Should have moved him to 3rd base before the ink was dry on that contract.
Amazing how closely Mauer’s numbers parallel with Mattingly’s.
Lifetime batting average, hits, OPS, OPS+ all virtually identical. Both uber elite for about half their careers then only above average after that. Mauer has a higher lifetime WAR because of his years as an elite catcher.
Mattingly won 9 Gold Gloves, Mauer won 3 at a much tougher position
Both borderline hall of famer’s in my book.
that just proves Mauer should be in the hall, because Mattingly certainly should
I think don mattingly benefitted from batting between henderson and winfield. Regardless, he was a great hitter. But I think he wore himself out practicing so much. The best thing is that his emergence forced a trade of Steve Balboni who got to help win a championship with the Royals. Always a silver lining. (I know, I’m annoying.)
Please! Cut it out already. Weak goat talk here. Twins paid out stupid cash and a whole bunch of it for a slap hitter. He had only one year where he managed to get a decent total of 28 home runs. He mustered between 10 and 13 homers in only four seasons and the rest of his career totals per season was single digit totals. Mark Grace probably had better career stats for about the same amount of years played then Mauer.u The Reds Suarez in his past 5 seasons dating back since 2015 has equalled Mauer’s career home run total. No room for slap hitting catchers in the hall
I mean they could have wasted the money on worse players
exactly. to compare this to the likes of Davis or any other “bad contract” is absurd. yes it may have been cash strapping, but even when relegated to 1B/DH duties Mauer was at least not dead weight with the bat. the guy was also the face of the franchise, while a lot of other guys who have signed restrictive extensions were not prospective faces, not current ones.
Had Mauer been able to catch this WOULD have been a great contract.
Lol, Maher did not have a HOF career. He was on the way there but got derailed by injuries. He was a good player and a real pro but his unfortunate contract dragged the Twins down. It’s no coincidence that the Twins started winning when he retired and they had the money to get more decent players.
Baseball in Korea soon? Because they are the one country that got his thing right so far. Are Americans paying attention? Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if Americans looked at Korean baseball games and said, “We want that, too.”? One can only hope about such things now.
I’ll give this comment a big ole “yikes” and move on
i dont like to complain about closed articles usually, but i do feel like it’s worth keeping the following one open for the sake of discussion on the Olympics. on that topic, i also feel it would be cool to see more coverage of the Olympic qualifiers here. obviously they probably will be postponed for some time now, but when they do happen it would be cool.
The trials are super stressful and exciting, especially when you know someone in them. Running races has sort of come to a stop except that plenty of people are outside running. I imagine that races will be super crowded when they come back. All this pent up energy looking for an outlet.
I would argue that the Mauer contract was not “worthwhile’, since that implies hindsight. I would rather say “justified” – the Twins took an intelligent gamble based on what was known at the time, knowing that it could work out hugely to their advantage or not (as with any mega-deal). Even intelligent gambles sometimes do not work out, and that was the case with this deal.
The Twins got a lot of production from him even though they did everything they could to tank his value. Mauer would have gained 5-10 WAR over the contract just by moving him to 3B instead of 1B. The Twins franchise has just been poorly run is all.
The contract has been completed. The whole point of the video is an argument that the deal was worthwhile after looking at the entirety of performance compared to value. The writer is using hindsight to argue that it was worth it in the end. You can disagree, but saying they were justified is an argument at the time the contract came to be. You didn’t provide any counters as to why it wasn’t worthwhile, only that you don’t think it was.