Posts Tagged Mauer

(copyright © m.a.h. hinton)

The unseasonably warm winter continues here in the North Country. Each day the sun climbs just a bit higher and burns just a bit brighter and longer. The longer light lightens the load, quickens our step.

In Florida and Arizona spring training is beginning, another sign of spring. The local 9 coming off an historically bad year look pretty much the same. An addition here or there. It does not engender great confidence. But if Morneau’s issues are finally behind him and if Mauer… if Mauer could become another player than he is….

I wrote last spring here about the Twins 200-million-dollar man (Puckett vs. Mauer). After last year’s debacle, I feel even less confident of the Twins’ future. But since it is spring and the season of hope, I hope to be proved wrong.

Pre-season time is like springtime for a sports fan. So is having a team that is doing well. It puts a little extra bounce in your step, makes it much easier to enjoy the littlest things of life.

Non-sports fans seem always bewildered by this. Sometimes arrogantly so. I never leave a conversation though with someone who says they do not watch sports without shaking my head and thinking, “poor, dumb bastard.”

Life without sports and the arts is an empty thing. Life with just one or the other is a life just half lived.

MontanaWriter as a blog is, as emailers sometimes remind me, unfocused… one day a poetry review, the next a western, the next something about sports or theology. To grow a blog, they say, you need to have one central theme and post everyday. I know the latter is true and something I want to move toward. But the former….

Life is too full of too many fascinating things. There are too many books to be read. Too many poems to be read aloud. There are too many games to watch. And the sky is too big to settle on just one thing under it.

MontanaWriter reaches its two-year anniversary next month. It is still still evolving and settling in… just as its creator is still evolving and settling in.

Pitchers and catchers have reported. Spring is just around the corner. Hope in the air.

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Target Field (copyright © m.a.h. hinton)

The NFL lockout looks like it is coming to an end. By all accounts the NBA one though, has the potential of taking down all or part of the season. In the revenue strong NFL it was a battle over splitting up an exponentially growing pie. In the much weaker revenue world the NBA lives in, it is a matter of fighting over scraps of a smaller and smaller pie. When bench-riding shooting guards are guaranteed tens of millions to suit up and sit in half-filled arenas, you need to seriously rethink your financial structure… maybe even contract a few teams.

For those of us who live and work in the real world, these off-season battles are mere irritants. Once they interfere with the season however, they become something much more serious.

Before the 1994-95 strike, I followed baseball as closely as I followed… religion. Then they had a “work stoppage” and I learned what many did:  that I could live quite well without baseball. I have never regained even half of my love and devotion to the game, I never will. In my mind and heart the game is forever lessened. Performance enhancing drugs did not make baseball irrelevant, greed did.

I am a hopeless sports fan. In the right context, I can watch and enjoy most any sport. Given a choice, I would choose sports every time over a movie or television program. Unscripted drama is much more compelling. I am glad that there will be football this fall. I hope that there will be an NBA season. If there is a shorter, more meaningful NBA season… say 50 games… everyone would be a winner.

For now there is long summer days and there is baseball. The Twins are playing better and Mauer is transitioning to first base. Greed has meant that I do not get to watch the Twins on “free” television anymore. But for the most part, I do not mind. Baseball on the radio is one of the definitive sounds of summer. I prefer it on the radio, in fact.

Re-invigorated by my recent vacation, I am writing again. Common blog wisdom is that to grow your blog readership you need to consistently and reliably post. Re-energized, I hope to do better. Yet blogs, like sports, also seem to me to need an occasional off-season. At least that is the way I am spinning it to myself.

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Another disappointing season?

The Kirby Puckett vs. Joe Mauer comparison/contrast has been on my mind these last few days. Though positionally they are different players (Mauer a catcher… Kirby center field), Mauer’s recent health issues will  narrow that gap sooner than later. They both played for the Twins… both were the number three hitter in the lineup… both, by far, the most popular players on their respective teams… both all-stars… the face of their respective franchises… both the highest paid players on their teams.

I moved to the Twin Cities and started following the Twins in earnest in 1986. I had followed them from afar because of my previous sojourn in the Red River Valley and through friends who grew up in Minnesota and were life-long Twins fans. Living in Chicago I usually went to Wrigley UNLESS the Royals or Twins were playing the White Sox. I always went to at least a few of those games with friends.

1986 was a good time to start following the Twins in earnest. That was the year before they won their first World Series. It was an over-achieving team of lunch-pail kind of guys that were about the same age as me: Gladden, Brunansky, Hrbek, Gaetti, Viola, Blyleven, and, of course, Puckett. Puckett was worth the price of admission, as a fielder and a batter. He was charismatic, a difference maker, a true super-star.

I assume that today’s fans feel about Joe Mauer the same way. He does stop time when he bats. All eyes in the stands and both dugouts are on him when he steps to the plate. Few players can do that in any era.

As I was thinking about them I looked up their stats. Baseball is, after all, a game of numbers. The first thing I found is that I had forgotten how great Kirby really was. Here are some side-by-side stats after their first 7 seasons with the Twins:

Kirby Puckett and Joe Mauer after first 7 seasons

What you notice in looking at these stats is that Kirby’s batting average after his first 7 seasons is really remarkably close to Mauer’s… but he hits more homeruns AND plays in more games. Kirby brings his batting average and power to more games than Mauer.

Mauer won an MVP in 2009, the year of his historic slugging percentage. That year he put up way more homers than he has at any other time in his career. So I decided to compare Mauer’s best season in his first seven, 2009, with Kirby’s best season in his first seven seasons, 1988. Here is a chart that compares those:

Mauer's best and Puckett's best in their first 7 seasons

Comparing the these two great seasons we see the same trend. Catcher Mauer is not able to play in as many games as the durable Puckett. Over a season that durability adds up to RBI. The number three hitter has one job: drive in runs. Again in 2009, Mauer hit substantially more  home runs than his career average… he more than doubled his career average. He has never come that close before or since. Puckett in 1988 hit just a few more than the number you would expect.

What do the Twins long term need to be competitive as a team… besides dominating pitching? A high average hitting catcher who plays in just 135 games a year? Or a run producing center fielder who plays in 158 games a year? I think the answer is obvious.

At the end of 7 seasons Joe Mauer has 1 MVP trophy… Puckett none. At the end of 7 seasons Mauer has won 1 playoff game… Puckett a World Series.

Man, do I miss Kirby!

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20 years already?!

With last night’s predictable Timberwolves loss, another miserable basketball season in Minnesota has come mercifully to a close. For basketball fans in the gopher state, it has been another long and disappointing season. Only the local semi-professional team, Hopkins High School, had a season worth remembering. The coach and administration of Hopkins High School should probably be compelled by the Minnesota State Legislature to hold a basketball recruitment seminar and invite David Kahn (GM of the Timberwolves), Tubby Smith (Men’s Gopher coach), and Pam Borton (Women’s Gopher Coach) to attend.

Fortunately Spring is here and the baseball season has begun. Though if the first two weeks of the season are any indication… this could well be a long season for Minnesota baseball fans also.

The Joe Mauer dilemma has raised its ugly head a few years earlier than the Twins management would have liked. They know that at some point they are going to have to move Mauer from behind the plate. You can’t have your 23+ million dollar man squatting behind the plate for too much longer if you expect his knees and body to hold up. But the moment you move him he becomes just a high-average singles hitter. The league is filled with those kind of hitters. None that can hit with Mauer’s average… but many, many who can drive in more runs. Singles hitter never make 23+ million dollar salaries, though. They are not worth it… no matter how high their average.

It is a long season, though. Much can happen in 162 games. I have little faith that much will for the local nine, but I hope to be pleasantly surprised. If they give Kubel less playing time, and Thome more at bats… if Mauer could regain just a little of the power he showed his MVP year… if Morneau gets back into the swing of things… and if every pitcher on the staff pitches much better than I think they can… they may be able to get back into the playoffs for a one and done with the Yankees.

1991, Minnesota sports’ last championship season, is 20 years past. At the rate we are going around here, it could be another 20 until we have something to celebrate.

*UPDATE Friday morning: the paper reports that Mauer is going on the DL and has an appointment with a doctor. Man, I miss Kirby!

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