The Mauer Mandate

It's almost as if he were channeling the President when the spectacular catcher of the Minnesota Twins, with one year to go before free agency, hit the motherlode of catcher contracts with a $184 million 8 year extension beginning in 2011. Add that to the $12.5 million he is due this year, that makes $196.5 million over 9 years for an average salary of $21.83 million. And if anyone is worth it, outside the Alex Rodriguez arena, Mauer might just be that man. A catcher with emerging power and a high average bat, the 2009 MVP was only 26 years old when 2010 began, and should provide a stable Hall of Fame level bat for the Twins for the next decade.

But just why did Minnesota break the bank for Mauer at the level they did? And is there no prohibition of salaries in the entertainment business (not only sports but music and tv/movie as well) in an era when many Minnesotans are losing their jobs or homes?

Mauer is a special case for the Twins, the hometown hero chosen as the first pick in the draft over other higher profile players, who turned around and made that pick look like gold. His contract was running out at a time when the Twins are ready to contend for years, and this is the year they are moving into newly minted Target Field with higher dollars to spend because of the new park. So suddenly, they were thinking in Yankee dollars? Well, it seems that might be the case.

Outside of the contract given in the last decade to Alex Rodriguez and Roger Clemens, most contracts for high caliber players begin in the range of $18 million per year, however, there seems to be the special case of two each year that pushes that number to start around $22 million. Think Santana, Sabathia, Teixiera, and now Mauer. Now Rodriguez and Clemens were above those numbers, actually above $25 million per year for both, so are we actually seeing a retrenching of that figure back a couple million dollars or an extension of the $18 million per year player forward. Both Rodriguez and Clemens had accomplished more in their career than that foursome. They were either Hall of Fame or nearly Hall of Fame worthy at the time of their contracts, especially in Clemens' case. That's not where Santana, Sabathia, Teixeira, or Mauer are today. They will need the years within the large contract to be Hall of Fame worthy to make it to Cooperstown down the line.

We have the tendency to question whether players at this level are worth an almost doubling of the slightly lesser player who might make it to the All-Star game level. Is Mauer worth 50% more than Chase Utley? Is he 50% better as a player or helpful to his team winning? We have our doubts. But it's not like we think, or the PEVA or SPRO projection system denotes, a salary that is not expensive. For us, Mauer is worth $140 million over the next 7 years, including 2010, only slightly lower on average than the $21.83 million of his current contract and the extension. So it's really just a quibble on the reasons of why and whether it makes sense from an overall payroll sense. For a team like the Yankees, it really doesn't matter. They can afford the next $15 million player just as well as that last $22 million one. But for a team like the Twins, even in the rarified air of a Target Field, that won't necessarily be the case. Or maybe the landscape is changing so much, that Minnesota is the new Bronx. Doubtful, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.