No Honor Among Thieves

By The Common Man

It’s no secret that Joe Mauer has struggled mightily in 2011. After hitting just .235/.289/.265 through his first nine games, Mauer went on the DL with mysterious leg and knee problems, which lasted until mid-June. He’s improved in the month that he’s been back, .270/.356/.315, but has been nowhere near himself. His GB/FB ratio is through the room at 1.78, and his extra-base hit percentage is down to 3.6% (his career numbers, respectively are 1.03 and 8.2%). Joe has, indeed, been a singles hitter in the first year of his eight-year contract extension.


Twins fans are (somewhat understandably) frustrated by their native son’s performance, and have begun booing Joe on occasion. Their frustration was given stupid, stupid voice through the following article, which TCM found via Baseball Think Factory, that suggests that Drew Butera has actually been more valuable to the Twins in 2011:

“No matter how you slice it, though, Mauer has hit one home run at Target Field as a $23 million a year player, and Drew Butera, one of the worst hitters in the major leagues, just tied him for home runs hit in the home park.

I anxiously embrace the great qualities we have with Mauer as a Twin, but no way, absolutely no way, should he make as much money as he does and not be able to hit the ball out of the park on a somewhat regular basis. The Boy Wonder's health issues have taken precedent over the highest-paid single hitter's lack of pop, but it remains a somewhat troubling part of the equation for the Twins. The guy gets home run money and he doesn't hit home runs. When the Twins gave him a contract that will keep him with the franchise, they did the right thing. But that doesn't mean he's not stealing money.”

Happy Birthday...

Joe Mauer!

True story: I was thinking about maybe writing one of my old "happy birthday" posts for today, and the easiest way to get to Baseball Reference's birthdays list is to go to the home page, type in the first player I think of, and then click on his birthdate. Well, today, the first player I thought of was Mauer (which you might think just happens all the time with me, but really, it was almost as likely to be Cory Snyder or Rusty Greer or Joaquin Andujar), and as is bound to happen one out of every 365.25 times I do this, it happens to be his birthday today! Joe was born on April 19, 1983, and so turns 28 today.

I don't have all that much to say about Mauer, because I don't really like to tell people what they already know. But I think it's a good time to remind people exactly how good he's been, and not for just that one unbelievable year. If Mauer had retired the other day, rather than being placed on the DL with a strange and confusing mix of maladies, he'd have a career that didn't look anything like anyone else's; a lovely .326/.406/.479 line, but in just six full seasons. Barely 1000 hits, fewer than 100 home runs, fewer than 500 RBI.

Yet, he's already one of the greatest catchers who has ever played. By wWAR, which weights wins above replacement in a way that places special emphasis on truly great seasons (I wrote about it here), Mauer would already qualify for the Hall of Fame -- or the Hall of wWAR, if you will. He's been that great, and great catchers are just that rare.

That's the thing a lot of people are missing. As much as Mauer has been injured, as much as it seems like he should be hitting more homers, as much as he's got a ton of work to do to live up to that huge contract, it's so rare for a catcher to perform the way Mauer has performed that he's already an elite all-time player. Of the thirteen greatest seasons catchers have ever had, by WAR, Mauer has had three of them; only Johnny Bench even has two (list here). Those would, of course, be the three seasons -- 2006, 2008 and 2009 -- in each of which I believe Mauer should have been named A.L. MVP. His "off" year of 2010 ranks 56th all-time at his position.

So. He's just 28, and he should have a whole bunch of great, healthy years ahead of him. But whatever he does in the future (and whatever position he plays while he's doing it), it's worth taking note of exactly how much he's done already and how rare all that is. You just don't see catchers like this guy.

The Twins Spending $184 Million Completes a Surreal Weekend

Yesterday, the Joe Mauer contract put a fitting cap on what was a surreal weekend for The Common Man. Were those TCM’s Twins shelling out $184 million after all those year’s in baseball’s small market wasteland? Indeed it was. In general, The Common Man is pleased this morning by the contract the Twins gave to Mauer, and looking forward to having him with the club for the foreseeable future. Twins bloggers and national media types are weighing in on this deal, but here are the salient points as TCM sees them:

1) $184 Million over eight years represents a huge risk by the generally risk-averse Twins, and could seriously hamper the club’s ability to compete on the back end of this deal.

2) However, in order to enjoy the benefits (drastically improved odds of making the playoffs every year, and happy fans) of having an otherworldly talent like Joe Mauer in the short term, you have to live with the long term risks.

3) The Twins smartly tacked this contract onto the end of Mauer’s existing contract, giving the club more financial flexibility in this down economy, it only becomes more expensive, presumably, when the economy recovers and revenues are at their normal levels.

4) The No Trade Clause is somewhat troubling, but seems to be the price of doing business. TCM doesn’t want to trade The Golden Boy anytime soon anyway, so that’s fine. If the clause becomes an issue, it will likely be because either the Twins are not competing and need to rebuild, or Mauer’s production has declined to the point that he’s no longer starting. In both cases, there are mitigating factors that might motivate Joe to actually enthusiastically accept a trade that would net him a better chance to win or more playing time.
There is no doubt that this deal represents a fair market value for Joe Mauer’s talents. It is just a shade higher than the 8-year, $180 million deal Mark Texeira signed, and a catcher of Mauer’s ability figures to be more valuable than a 1B of Tex’s.

5) While Joe probably wanted to stay all along, he and his agent really had the Twins over a barrel in these negotiations. The Twins, from a PR perspective, simply did not have the option of letting Joe walk away a year after opening a new tax-payer funded stadium, and a year removed from a well-deserved AL MVP award. He is one of the most popular players in franchise history, and nothing would have killed attendance in Year 2 of Target Field like a Mauer-less Opening Day lineup.

In retrospect, The Common Man thinks it’s clear that the Denard Span and Nick Blackburn deals were done to send a message to Mauer that the Twins intended to be competitive in the long-term, and were not going to let Joe wallow in mediocrity like the Twins did with Kirby Puckett in ’93-95.

Other surrealness that happened this weekend to The Common Man:

When The Boy gets a new interest, it’s not just an interest. It quickly becomes an obsession. This weekend, The Boy decided that he was no longer a small human child, but a whale. He would only eat food with krill in them (krill sandwiches, krill chili, krill breakfast burritos, etc.). On Sunday, this obsession culminated in a trip to the book store, where The Uncommon Wife fueled this fire with some extra gasoline, buying two books on whales, a book on sharks, and one on the ocean. The Boy returned from the store, and announced that he was a sperm whale, “because sperm whales have teeth.” The problem with three-year old, land-locked sperm whales, however, is that they want you to pretend to be an octopus or orca, and then use those teeth. Ow.
Throwing dry brush, jet fuel, and treasured keepsakes from the attic on the fire, The Uncommon Wife suggested, and TCM accepted her proposal for, a family vacation to Los Angeles in April to do some whale watching, among other things. This will also allow The Common Man to take in games in Arizona, Anaheim, and possibly San Diego. So everybody wins!

The Boy was also decidedly high-energy all weekend. By 9:00 last night, as he called his mother up to sing him a song before bed, The Uncommon Wife decided she had had enough. “Ice cream,” she told The Common Man as she met him at the stairs. “That’s not a question or request.” Intimidated by the wild look in her eye, TCM asked meekly, “Do you know what kind you want?” “Something chocolate,” she glowered. “Don’t get what you usually get.”
So, The Common Man ran to the grocery store. TCM pulled into his parking spot directly opposite another beleaguered-looking guy who was just getting out of his truck. TCM then followed him into the store, and both headed directly for the ice cream. As they stood, intently examining frozen case after frozen case of ice cream, TCM looked over and said, “So you got sent out for ice cream too?”
“Yep. And they’re never specific about what they want, are they?”
“Mine just said something about chocolate,” said TCM. “So at least I have a genre to work in.”
“I heard her say chocolate and caramel,” said TCM’s new friend. A bond was forged.
After both heading through the self-checkout, the brothers-in-arms stared at each other briefly before exchanging “Good luck”s, and drove away.

Much of this weekend was spent finally finishing the sink and vanity in TCM’s new bathroom. Alas, The Common Man was called into the sink and vanity project relatively late in the game. The Uncommon Wife had started it three weeks ago, but events conspired to keep it from completion. By the time TCM got to the sink, there were parts missing and no way to tell what had been done from the instructions, and what still needed doing. So The Common Man began taking things apart and starting from scratch. Alas, TCM kept needing more and more things, and ultimately made seven trips to hardware stores (because there are only so many times you can go to one hardware store before you are too ashamed) over the course of Saturday, buying new, flexible pipes for the water, more plumber’s tape, a rubber washer, an extension for the drain pipe, a second extension for the drain pipe when it turned out the first extension was the wrong diameter, and a new drain to replace the one The Common Man broke. TCM is ashamed and feels like much less of a man. On the other hand, he does now know how to not screw up when taking apart and putting together a new sink, because he’s already made all the errors a person can make.

Or did he?

Keith Law Is Smarter Than You...Get Over It

The Common Man is very amused by the controversy generated by Keith Law’s 2nd-place vote for Javier Vazquez on his Cy Young Award ballot. Law, as most of the Interwebz has learned since yesterday, crunched some numbers and came up with a very convincing argument that Vazquez provided the second most value in the National League, and that the innings Chris Carpenter did not throw while on the disabled list dropped him below Adam Wainwright in terms of overall value. Law has been accused of bias and incompetence (which, really, is a normal day for him, given how pig-headed and traditional analysis-minded many ESPN.com readers and baseball fans in general are) because of his vote. It’s a shame, because unlike some other voters, the diminutive and cherubic KLaw lays out a thoughtful and transparent reasoning for his vote on his ESPN blog, and has clearly done his due diligence in preparing his ballot.

For the better part of two days, on Shyster’s Hardball Times site, there has been a proxy battle raging between Law’s champions and detractors (okay, mostly one or two detractors) that seem to be raising the same concerns that writers and pundits are raising nationally. When he was on the mound, these detractors argue (often without this amount of coherency), he was at least one of the three best pitchers in the league, if not the best (AND LOOK AT HIS W-L RECORD AND ERA !!!!11!!!!11), and that the award is meant to honor the best pitcher in each league, which is not necessarily always the most valuable. Quantity, they seem to argue, is trumped by quality.


While the argument is relatively (ahem) by numbers, some interesting points were brought up over the course of the discussion. One commenter in the Shyster thread, a “civilwarmike,” wonders, “To dock Carpenter because of innings pitched? Does that mean Joe Mauer will should not[sic] be the MVP because he missed the first month of the season? Just wondering. “ It’s an interesting idea, Carpenter and Mauer both missed roughly a month of the season, and were huge question marks as they came back from their shoulder and kidney problems, respectively. Both ended up being big time performers for their clubs, who both (largely on the strength of their stars’ performances) won their respective divisions. And if we are going to count the time and innings Carpenter missed against him, don’t we also have to do the same to Mauer.

The answer, obviously, is that of course we have to count Mauer’s time and plate appearances missed against him. In 226 plate appearances, Minnesota’s non-Mauer catchers hit .277/.335/.335 with no homers. In April, Jose Morales and Mike Redmond combined to hit .297/.358/.351. It’s almost assured that Mauer would have outperformed that duo. So his absence not only hurt Mauer’s individual stats, but it undoubtedly hurt his club. In April, the Twins scuffled out of the gate to an 11-11 mark, and finished the month in fourth place, a game back of (chortle) the Kansas City Royals.

But Mauer’s absence does not tell the whole story. On the first pitch of the season, Mauer lined a bullet into the leftfield bleachers in the Metrodome and didn’t stop hitting from then on. Mauer finished with an ungodly .365/.444/.587 line, with 191 hits, 28 HR, 96 RBI, and 94 runs scored. It was one of the two or three best seasons ever by a catcher. His OPS+ was 170 (Mark Teixeira was second at 149). Despite missing a full month, Mauer led the American League in Runs Created, and contributed more than a win more to his team than any other American League hitter according to Adjusted Batting Wins. According to Baseball Prospectus, Mauer contributed almost 18 more runs versus replacement level to his team’s offense than Derek Jeter (89 to 71) and 1.4 wins more than Ben Zobrist in WARP, the second leading hitter (9.0 to 7.6, though Zack Greinke actually led the American League with 9.5). Fangraphs lists Zobrist as the Major League leader in WAR, with 8.6 wins, but a) Mauer finished just behind with 8.2 wins and b) as Jeremy Greenhouse pointed out for Baseball Prospectus last Tuesday, catcher defense and catcher replacement levels are not properly valued yet by WAR. No matter what stat you use, it’s pretty clear that Joe Mauer has lifted and separated himself from the rest of the field of AL MVP candidates simply because the value he added during the time he was on the field was so far, even quantitatively, beyond what other hitters contributed over the full season.

Carpenter, on the other hand, suffers in this analysis because of the quality of his competition. While Carpenter was terrific while he was on the field, the other competitors for the NL Cy Young were almost as good if not a little better. Carpenter finished sixth in the National League in WAR behind Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum, Vazquez, Dan Haren, Wainwright, and Ubaldo Jimenez. He finishes 6th in WARP behind those same five minus Wainwright, but plus Jair Juerrens. He finishes second to Lincicum in VORP for pitchers, and third behind Lincecum and Vazquez in FIP. With fewer K/9 and K/BB and fewer IP, it is impossible to construct an argument for Carpenter beyond looking at his W-L record and ERA. And in a packed bunch of starters, it is entirely reasonable that the value lost by the month he missed knocks Carpenter out of the race.

It’s really that simple. On the one hand, the players’ individual seasons are very similar in terms of the paths they took. However, the contexts in which they are competing for their respective post-season awards are completely different. There is far more evidence than Joe Mauer belongs in the top spot of every single AL MVP ballot than evidence that Carpenter even belongs in the top three of the NL. Sorry Cardinals fans.

What the Playoffs Mean

This morning, Aaron Gleeman rebutted Jim Souhan’s contention that the Twins would be better off not making the playoffs, noting that “Getting into the playoffs thanks only to an awful division and being a thoroughly mediocre team with tons of flaws and late-season injuries to key players aren't things that necessarily keep teams from having success in the postseason because having success in the postseason is an unpredictable mix of skill and luck played out over the course of at most 19 games.” Technically, of course, Gleeman’s right. With enough luck, pluck, and gumption, even the 82 win St. Louis Cardinals managed to win the World Series in 2004. If the Twins get hot, they have a realistic chance of winning the tournament (especially if they play their best team in the field, which they are currently not doing by leaving Carlos Gomez and Brendan Harris on the bench). It is a smaller chance than the Yankees, Red Sox, or Cardinals have, but it’s still a possibility.

Gleeman doesn’t mention, and Souhan probably has never thought about, the most important reason why Twins fans should care about the team making the postseason…money. In Baseball Between the Numbers (2006), Nate Silver argues that “a team receives a long-term benefit to its regular season attendance as a result of reaching the postseason. In addition, making the playoffs brings the bonus of getting to play some number of additional home games in front of a packed house at higher-than-normal ticket prices.” Likewise, playoff appearances have additional benefits, including richer local media contracts, higher regular-season attendance the following year, more concessions sold, etc. In all, Silver calculated that a playoff appearance is worth approximately $25 million.

This extra $25 million or so will help a team to loosen otherwise tight budgetary restrictions, especially if that team plays in a smaller market. The Twins must maximize revenue streams and minimize expenses (as much as is practical) to afford the level of talent necessary for the team to compete again and again for a playoff spot. It is a cycle of success that can, at least in part, fund and sustain itself as long as a team continues to produce talent from the farm system, and does not significantly waste resources (ahem, Livan Hernandez, Luis Ayala, ahem). Teams can use their ability to get to the postseason in one year as a springboard to get to it the next.

The Twins have one glaring problem looming on the horizon, even as they get ready to enter a new stadium and reap the benefits associated with being able to charge higher prices: Joe Mauer’s impending free agency (after 2010) and the additional dollars the team is going to have to shell out as its cores get older and more expensive. It is essential, for the team to feel reasonably confident it can get to the playoffs and share in that cash bonanza at least every other season, particularly if it is going to shell out $20-25 million a year for Mauer’s services over the first part of the Twenty-Teens.


Fig. 1: Your new god.

The Common Man believes that the Twins will sign Mauer to a long-term extension regardless; however, for the team to maintain its core and to build upon that core, it will have to have that additional playoff money. Scott Baker, Justin Morneau, Michael Cuddyer, and Joe Nathan are all about to get more expensive (or continue to be expensive). Nick Punto is going to continue to eat money for doing little. And eventually, the team is going to have to think about whether to lock up Kevin Slowey, Denard Span, and Jason Kubel to longer-term deals. The Twins need to make the postseason again soon just to be able to subsequently make the postseason again. The possibility Gleeman discusses of a deep run into the tournament would be icing on an otherwise very lucrative cake.