Mauer’s Comeback: Albatross No More?
The Minnesota Twins have not had many bright spots this season, but one seems to be the return of Joe Mauer‘s bat. After an injury-plagued disaster of a 2011 seasons, Joe Mauer is hitting like his old self again. After his 2-4 with a home run and a walk peformance in yesterday’s losing effort against the White Sox, Mauer now has a classic, Mauer-esque .301/.414/.423 (138 wRC+) line on the season.
One of the biggest concerns for the Twins going into the season was that they would not only be terrible (which has happened), but that if they needed to move one of their big contracts (Mauer and Morneau) for rebuilding purposes, that neither player would hit well enough to bring back much in trade given what they are owed. This is not to say that the Twins “have” to trade Mauer any time soon — if and when they should consider it is another discussion. The two-part question here a whether Mauer’s bat is really back after the mess that was 2011, and also whether he will be worth his sizable contract going forward.
The Twins signed Mauer to a massive eight-year, $184 million contract (for the years 2011-2018, although the contract was signed prior to the 2010 season) in the wake of a monstrous 2009 performance. Mauer did it all that year, playing solid defense at catcher while adding near-30 homer power to his usual combination of lots of walks, few strikeouts, and high batting average (.373!). It was so impressive he managed to take home that season’s MVP, as roughly the same pool of voters who gave Justin Verlander the 2011 MVP when he probably was not as valuable as Jose Bautista or Jacoby Ellsbury voted for Mauer when he clearly was not as valuable as Zack Greinke (/bitterness).
Silly awards complaining aside, Mauer’s 2009 was an incredible performance, even by his standards. His power went back to previous levels in 2010, but a .373 wOBA from a catcher is still very good. The contract still loomed a bit, but he looked like he could at least approximate its value… then the leg problems started up in 2011. When Mauer did manage to play, he could not hit the ball with nearly as much authority, which drove down both his BABIP, and his power went from average to just bad.
It is too simple to dismiss the 2011 performance due to those injuries, but Mauer had a long record of excellent performance before that. It all (including aging, regressions, and so on) has to be taken into account. ZiPS RoS sets Mauer’s current true talent at .302/.388/.431 — a .355 wOBA, which is good for a catcher, if not quite up to what his contract would lead one to expect.
However, while I again caution against setting ZiPS aside simply because it does not “know” how the injuries effected Mauer last year, signs so far this year point to Mauer being able to do his thing again. Mauer’s main calling card has always really been his ability to put balls in play, and his 9.7 percent 2011 strikeout rate is right in line with his 9.9 percent career rate. His .122 isolated power is not that impressive, but again, his offense was very valuable in years when he had ISOs around the same. One might be concerned about his .331 BABIP so far this season, but Mauer has almost always had an above-average BABIP (.342 career). Perhaps most impressively, Mauer’s walk rate so far this year is the highest of his career. It would be quite reasonable if someone wanted to say that Mauer’s “true talent” wOBA was around .370. A catcher with a .370 wOBA is quite valuable, and even with aging taken into account, would probably be worth the remaining money on Mauer’s contract.
But that brings us to a little problem: Mauer has only played about half of his games at catcher this season, with the remaining games split between first base and designated hitter. Some of this has been because of Justin Morneau‘s on-and-off availability, but the Twins are also trying to keep Mauer healthy and on the field by playing him at catcher less frequently. Given the last couple of seasons, it seems unlikely this situation is going to be reversed. If Mauer splits his time between catcher and first base/designated hitter, the positional adjustments would basically cancel each other out. That puts a big hit on Mauer’s value.
Starting in 2013, Mauer has six years and $138 million left on his contract, which pays him like something between a five and six win player. If Mauer is currently a .370 wOBA true-talent hitter, that is worth about 30 runs above average as a hitter in the current run environment. Adding in replacement level, assuming he splits his time in the field as he has this season, and taking into account annual attrition that puts him right at a bit over five wins. However, that assumes he gets 700 plate appearances, and given his past, 600 seems like a more than fair estimate of his playing time. That puts him between four and five wins.
These are all rough estimates, of course, based on uncertain projections. One win may not seem like much. However, over the number of years left on the contract, the different that one win makes is about $40 million dollars. That is not to say that Mauer could not help some team — not every contract has to match some WAR-per-dollars formula, and team contexts vary depending on things like their budget and closeness to contention. In the Twins’ case, however, Mauer’s contract relative to his expected performance currently fits neither their budget nor their playoff chances. That is not to say they could not work around it in the future, but the Rockies-Todd Helton situation is not one the team should bank on, either.
Mauer might, of course, have value to other teams that have more money and are closer to contention. Still, even if leaving aside his full no-trade clause and the potential PR nightmare that comes from trading Mr. Hometown Discount (ahem), a hitter of even Mauer’s abilities becomes more of a rarified taste given how his increasingly evident positional limitations effects his value. “Albatross” might be too strong of a word to use yet for Mauer’s contract. However, despite his return to form, Mauer is going to have to do better for that contract to give the Twins much value whether he stays or goes.
Good write-up, but I want to make a quick point. Before Mauer signed, everyone’s (Twins fans) biggest worry was he would be another great player we wouldn’t be able to afford to keep. After he signed a deal that was probably a lot less than what he would have been offered on the free agent market, everyone (Twins fans) complained that the contract would prevent us from competing again. Hindsight is 20/20, and while the last two years have not been vintage Mauer, I personally would have been more upset if they let him leave, or traded him away like they did Santana. The contract may seem large now, but with the threat of free agency, and the backlash that would have followed for the ownership, I still think it was a good deal.
Agreed.
I’m a Twins fan lifer and a giant Mauer apologist (None needed this year) and I would’ve been livid if they let him go. At the time, the thought of letting a one of a kind talent and hometown kid go when every one knows we have one of the richest ownership groups (Yes I know they aren’t required to spend their money). I’m very pleased to see him playing well again.
Agreed completely with the previous 2 posters. Twins fans don’t realize just how amazing Mauer has been. I know BA isn’t a great stat, but no other AL catcher has ever won a batting title, and Mauer won 3 in 4 years! Think about that. I could list a litany of other stats but I won’t.
I have also been a huge apologist for him, and am so glad to see him hitting like we all know he can again. When he signed the contract, I figured he wouldn’t actually be worth it. But to me it was worth it no matter what. I said I would not complain about the payroll as long as he was a Twin, because, prior to him re-signing, the thought of him leaving for another team was unbearable.
Great Article.
For fantasy purposes with AVG category and not OBP seems like Mauer is as valuable as Jason Kendall. Do you think he can hit 15-18 HRs this year? If not I might as well roll with Lucroy and trade him for an arm.
No. He hits closer to 10 HR, and has never hit well in Target Field. A fair over/under is 12.
Let me correct myself; he has never hit homeruns well in Target Field.
The one he hit in April was either his first or second at the new park.
He hit .365 his big year, not .373. Right?
Correct.
Yes, injury was the risk the Twins decided to take on Mauer’s big contract. They lost the coin toss on that, but it is good to see a small market team getting some value back.
Good luck to Mauer and the Twins.
Injury wasn’t a risk, it was a certainty.
liar
From a trade perspective, it’s pretty close to an albatross. If they wanted to get rid of him, they’d have to pick up some salary and they wouldn’t get anything valuable in return. Nobody’s going to give a legit prospect and take on most of his salary.
Hopefully he does well over the next few years, but from the get-go I thought it was an insane contract unless they thought his power was for real.
unless they thought his power was for real.
Chick Dinner for this man!
Keep in mind this is an organization with little front office turn over that had been projecting more home runs from Mauer for years. The contract was in part, self validation that they in fact had identified a superstar with the #1 pick in the draft.
To be fair, he was a legit superstar in 2006 and 2008 without hitting many homeruns, hitting over 6 fWAR per year. In 09, when he had 7.9 fWAR, they decided to commit. That is at a superstar level, though the front office definitely overestimated his remaining games at catcher.
Do teams really think they can sign a guy to a long deal that extends into his decline, reap the prime years, and then trade the remaining for value? No team in their right mind would take Mauer for free (except the Yankees, because money seemingly doesn’t matter if you’re the Yankees).
yes yes, good yankees joke. the yankees have infinite money! they can sign anyone or take on any contract! no. this is no longer true. they have to have a payroll under 189mil by 2014, otherwise, with the increasing luxury tax rates for each year you are over, the luxury tax will be untenable for the organization. so they basically need to drop about 20mil from their current payroll in two years. which means that not only can they not absorb bad contracts from other teams or sign premium free agents, they actually have to lose valuable pieces because they cannot afford to re-up with them. kinda sounds like a small-market-team-type next few offseasons for them, huh? the yankees are about to know what it feels like to not be able to afford their own star players.
The Yankees can easily afford to pay luxury tax out of their $500M+ in revenues, and Hank Steinbrenner will happily pay it. Hal Steinbrenner won’t, but its very possible that Hank will find a way to buy out Hal or diminish his authority, and that whole goal of avoiding the luxury tax penalties will fly out the window.
Yes, the Yankees can be profitable with a much higher payroll than $189 million. They may not currently be willing to pay more than that, but I imagine if they thought Mauer was the missing piece to a championship, they would pretty much ignore this line. If not, their fans would be upset and would have every right to be.
Vernon Wells
Well, the White Sox have gotten value from all the deals they’ve signed Paul Konerko to.
I agree that he’s not looking like an albatross this year, so something not quite as strong is appropriate. But 6 years is a long time, and that’s still a lot of money, and there’s still a lot of uncertainty. I think it’s still a terrible deal, but at least this year it’s not looking as terrible as it could. That’s small consolation.
He has a full no-trade clause anyway. Non-entity, you guys.
As in “I know it was mentioned in the piece, but Mauer isn’t going to waive it.”
Agreed. I really doubt Mauer took a hometown discount with a NTC just to accept a deal 3-4 years into it.
It’s a huge albatross. The above calculations seriously underestimate Mauer’s likely decline. With very few exceptions, catchers who catch as much as Mauer did in their twenties decline sharply in their early to mid 30s.
As long as Mauer plays 90+ games at catcher and OBP’s .380+, the contract won’t be what prevents the Twins from contending. He’d be a $16M a year player making $23M. Are we to believe that overpaying a guy by $7M a year is THAT big a deal?
Let’s be honest… the Twins would just blow that extra $7M on some 36 year old innings-eating veteran who pitches to IMPACT.
This comment is represents exactly the thoughts that have gone through my head, even to the dollar estimations. It’s not a disaster of a contract, even though they are overpaying him. The only reason the Pohlads shelled out that money was to prevent a civil revolt in Minnesota if he walked on free agency. They were not going to spend it on CJ Wilson or Cole Hamels or any other apparent ace starting pitcher.
Yeah, that is the thing. I think this contract sucks, but I also think this organization is rotten to the core, and the decisions they’d make with the money wouldn’t pay off anymore than Mauer’s contract. The Twins just need to clean house from top to bottom and run themselves like the Rays. The Twins were never a model organization, they just got away with looking like one for a long time. It could be 4-6 years before this team is back on its feet.
Oliver–
I’m not a Twins fan, so I’m not trying to be a homer here, but I don’t see any long term fatal flaw with the organization. The Twins have made the playoffs six times since 2000. SIX. That’s more than a majority of teams in MLB. especially ones without the vast payroll resources of the Yankees/Red Sox/etc.
Bill Smith made value-losing trade after value-losing trade (Delmon Young, Johan Santana, JJ Hardy to Orioles, Matt Capps, etc.), Morneau suffered concussion injuries (BEYOND THE TWINS’ CONTROL), Liriano began to struggle.
Bill Smith has since been fired. The Twins will have opportunities to bring in elite talent via very high draft picks. And now the Twins are spending 100MM+ on payroll, which will always help. And they play in the weak AL Central. It won’t take long for the Twins to be contending and relevant again.
BX, all of what you say is true, but it’s all in the past.
The fact is the Twins presently are terrible. See my comment below re: Peter. Not much more to say there.
It’s also the case that the Twins presently have a dreadful minor-league system, and this year’s draft probably won’t help much. Not White Sox bad, because they do have some serious talent in guys like Miguel Sano and Eddie Rosario, but they’re a ways away. KG gives those guys a 5 star and 4 star rating, respectively. And below them it’s just organizational fodder, with some hope of a few of them becoming useful MLB players. But other than those two guys, there’s no one with any ceiling.
Another cause for concern is the Twins have just fallen on their faces in terms of player development and drafting. The Twins suck today in part because the drafted guys like Ben Revere, Carlos Gutierrez, and Chris Parmelee. They haven’t been able to develop guys like Aaron Hicks (although assigning blame is hard, of course). Truthfully they haven’t been able to develop bats at all, other than Mauer, Morneau, and then later Span.
They also have drafted pitchers poorly. They made safe choices instead of taking pitchers with high ceilings, which is how you end up with a rotation that should be starting in AAA. Control pitchers with no upside has left the Twins hard-up for pitching, and that’s their own fault.
Another worrying facet in all of this is how they’ve handled pitchers. Again, a question of who do you assign blame to, but I think they’ve handled Scott Baker and Francisco Liriano very poorly, while former members of the organization have said that the Twins don’t know how to deal with pitchers’ health. See this, for example– http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/05/08/ex-twins-prospect-dan-osterbrock-has-angry-words-for-team/ Might just be sour grapes, but there seem to be too many of these incidents.
I don’t know if that’s convincing, but I think the Twins have been very poorly run for many years, and we were able to hide it for a while by winning games. That’s not the case anymore. The Twins have a new stadium that’s seeing a steep decline in attendance, and a lot of fan antipathy. The future looks pretty bleak to me.
@oliver, can anyone answer for me why everyone hates ben revere? if you, and the twins, and most other people think denard span is a good player, why doesn’t anyone respect revere? he doesn’t have an arm, but other than that he seems like a major league quality centerfielder. That seems like fair value from a late 1st round pick.
People don’t like Revere because he can’t get on base, he has zero power, and his batting average isn’t anything to brag about.
Ben Revere is a one trick pony. He can run very fast. This translates into his ability to steal and cover ground in the outfield; however, his arm makes him an average-below average defensive player.
Span does a good job getting on base. He doesn’t have much power, but it’s better than Revere. His defense is average. He has worse range than Revere, but a better arm.
Span is a good leadoff hitter who plays average defense. What holds him back as a player is stealing bases and playing better defense. Whereas Revere only offers real value as a base stealer, and he doesn’t get on base enough to utilize his best weapon.
90+ games at catcher per year? He barely averaged 90 games at catcher during his prime ages 26-28, and at age 29 is on pace for 80 games this year. When the organization can only put him to his best use less than half the time for any reason, that’s bad. It doesn’t matter if it’s other players injuries or their need to minimize wear and tear on their expensive catcher, it’s still a substantial dimunation of value.
It’s very likely those injuries pile up and that he plays even less catcher in his thirties, even that he misses whole seasons due to injury. So by your own measure the gap is going to be even bigger than $7M per year.
I’m tired of hearing about the “hometown discount”, it’s meaningless, the fact that another team would likely have overpaid Joe even more in free agency is no justification for the Twins decision. The Twins substantially overpaid and with the NTC locked themselves into a long stretch where overpayments on Mauers contract will cost them 10% or more of their payroll. They should have insisted on a shorter contract, starting in 2010, or traded him if his “market value” so greatly exceeded his future baseball value.
Any prospects + $23m per year for the next 8 years is is worth a heck of a lot more than a catcher entering his 30s likely to decline to merely good levels.
Given the massive contract, the number of years remaining on said contract, and the full no-trade clause, the re-emergence of Mauer’s bat this year was perhaps the single most important aspect of the Twins’ ability to compete in the coming years.
The Twins were never going to make the playoffs this season, but knowing that Mauer might come close to earning his pay during the next few years when the Twins could be capable of competing is a boon in what has otherwise been a miserable season.
…It seems that most of my fellow Twins fans in Minneapolis don’t quite see it this way, however.
The Twins are not going to make the playoffs anytime soon.
The Twins have four players who have a chance of being league-average or better in Mauer, Span, Morneau and Willingham. Everyone else on the hitting side of the roster is fungible.
Our pitching is shambolic. And that’s an understatement. We don’t have a single starting pitcher who has a chance of being league average or better. The bullpen has been better than I expected, but that’s simply because it’s been a notch above godawful. Our 6th-best pitcher by WAR is Drew Butera.
Well…umm…yea. Go Twins, get that first overall draft pick!
I always figured Mauer’s worst case scenario would be full-time DH. And even then, his hit tool should fix most of that damage. He has a higher career OPS+ than Teixeria and, presumably, if he gave up catching, his offensive numbers might pick up a bit without the added pounding from catching.
Paul Molitor had a couple 5 WAR seasons as a DH in his mid 30s. I don’t think there’s reason to think Mauer would fare much worse than that.
…but you’re not double accruing for not playing catcher and not staying healthy like the writer did. Fix your math to broken please.
I don’t know what this comment is saying. Could you please rephrase? I have read it several times and am missing something, I think. I’m not sure if you are critiquing the author of the article for double accruing or the commentator for NOT double accruing, and I am not 100% sure what you mean. Also, your final sentence is just confusing, even if you were joking; I can’t actually tell.
Of course, Mauer’s deal an albatross. Would he get 6 yr / 138 if he was a free agent at the end of this season? Uh ….. no. Not even close.
I’m curious, this revolt that would have allegedly transpired had Mauer been allowed to walk. What would that look like? Would Target Field have been pelted with lutefish while the fans sternly shook their heads in disappointment?
What is lutefish?
I believe Monroe is referring to a popular Norwegian/Minnesota dish.
Lye flavored fish jello.
I’m guessing he means lutefisk. Essentially, whitefish soaked in lye.
It’s also a recurring joke here on the frozen tundra (MN).
What is Google?
Could he handle 3B? He has a great arm and is nimble. It seems a shame to force him to play 1B/DH when he is not catching.
He was an all-state quarterback and forward in football and basketball, in high school. The left knee is shot but he still has enough raw athleticism in the tank that he could figure it out, I think. This organization is just to closeminded or shy to ask their veteran players to make a sensible adjustment like that.
I know hindsight is aiding me here but the timing of the resigning seemed to benefit Mauer more then the Twins. Mauer had just won a MVP after having a career year that far exceeded anything he had done to that point, especially in terms of power. This puts Mauer in the best position in his career leverage wise going in to contract negotiations. And considering that he had only hit double digit home runs just twice in his entire professional career at that point, wouldn’t it have better served the Twins to wait at least until mid-season to see if it was just a, for lack of a better term, fluke? The Twins must have believed that he was going to continue to hit for that kind of power on a consistent basis which, to me anyways, was contradictory to what his career had shown at that point. And even though he always hit for a high average, that’s not enough to warrant 20+ million per year.
And while I can’t tell you what Mauer’s true thoughts were at the time(or now for that matter) I really thought that the whole ‘hometown kid playing for the hometown team’ was something that he was proud of and therefore I believed that it would have taken a monster deal from another team to pry him away. So it seems that the Twins jumped the gun under a preconceived notion that he was going to receive a deal in FA worth more then 180 million they were able to afford.
Buy high, sell low. The Twins have been doing that since the Santana trade.
A Bill Smith tradition :-/
As long as you aren’t playing actual hitters at DH and 1B, the positional value of breaking Mauer at C is way overstated. Save his legs until sacrificing them would actually help win games.
Mauer did not deserve his gold glove in 2009. Laird did.
Even with him hitting meaningless HR’s in losses (or the few blowout wins)
facts are facts.
I realize this site has a plethora of children who believe that everything can be broken down using numbers…those little kids need to get outside more
often ..or run the risk of taking their calculators to prom and perhaps “down the aisle”
Mauer is the most over-paid meaningless hit guy in the game.
All you have to do to understand his value…is to watch him weakly ground
out with runners in scoring position with the game on the line.
it’s so nice to be told we’re all idiot children, thanks for coming over and posting your comment!
Mauer is hitting .326 (.463 OBP) with runners in scoring position and .313 (.450 OBP) in high leverage situations. The eyes can play tricks on the mind, that’s why we look to the numbers.
I think his value to the franchise goes beyond this $/WAR. It’s one of those “goodwill” type of things. Fans get disenchanted (or would the word be disenfranchised here?) when you let stars go. I realize that winning keeps them coming too, but losing your homegrown superstar and also sucking would be a lot worse than just sucking. Mauer might not live up to the contract performance-wise, but I don’t think he’s going to completely crap the bed either. As long as he’s “good” I think it’ll be worth it to most Twins fans to have a guy they can call “their” guy.
While I suspect you are correct in the realm of the lesser of two evils that sucking with a homegrown player is > sucking without one, I doubt that it buys enough “good will” to make much of a difference.
This isn’t a new, “out-there,” or unquantifiable concept. Highly measurable revenue impacts of players beyond their wins provided and playoff odds changes have been around for the better part of a decade. Marquee value, merchandise value, etc are all very carefully figured by teams paying any attention. While I don’t have access to the types of data required (and Mauer isn’t as popular in Minnesota as he was in 2009, which is to say he is now merely an extremely popular athlete that is by far the team’s leader in merchandise sales and recognition as opposed to a completely infallible being approaching the status of deity), I can say with a high degree of confidence that having Mauer on the team is worth millions to the Twins.
I think the Twins would have more good will by winning games without Mauer or by paying Mauer less and using the savings to get better pitchers than the status quo.
I would rather the Twins give Joe Mauer $23 million than give Pavano, Capps, Blackburn, and Marquis $21 million. The Twins can still compete even with Mauer’s contract. There are a lot of other bad deals still hamstringing the team.
Hopefully they use the $16.5 million of that coming off the books next season towards one really good pitcher instead of a grip of bad ones. Quality not quantity.