All I know is, I picked the guy I wanted. I was at peace with it then, and you have to say it worked out pretty well.
— Minnesota Twins vice president of player personnel Mike Radcliff
Of the 52 players who have been chosen with the No. 1 overall pick, only three have accumulated a higher Wins Above Replacement (WAR) as measured by baseball-reference.com than Joe Mauer: Alex Rodriguez, Chipper Jones and Ken Griffey Jr. Griffey is a Hall of Famer. Rodriguez and Jones will be one day.
Mauer? The jury remains out on him, but it’s important to keep his career in perspective when not only discussing his credentials as a franchise player, but also when setting expectations for whoever the Minnesota Twins pick first overall on June 12.
It’s easy to think that Hunter Greene or Brendan McKay or Kyle Wright will be a franchise-changing player for the Twins, who lost over 100 games last year and haven’t made the playoffs since 2010. Every winning team could use an ace or an everyday shortstop — and depending on which path he takes, Greene could be either or — and a No. 1 overall selection is something to get excited about after a terrible season like Minnesota had last year, but for every Griffey (1987) there’s a Delmon Young (2003). For every David Price (2007) there’s a Matt Bush (2004).
The only other time the Twins have had the No. 1 overall pick, in 1983, the player the Twins selected didn’t sign. Even in 2001, with Mauer in their backyard, Minnesota nearly took Mark Prior — a pitcher from USC who was out of the league by 2006 due to injuries. At the time, however, many felt the Twins had just chosen the cheaper option (Prior’s father suggested teams would pay upwards of $20 million for his son’s talents in what was then an uncapped draft).
The Star Tribune’s Phil Miller goes in-depth with Mauer’s selection in a recent piece for the paper, and it’s worth a read if you want the minutia as well as a retrospective, but Minnesota was panned by many corners for their selection. To this day Mauer remains a lightning rod for criticism due to his $23 million per year salary, declining stats at the plate and a move to first base in 2014.
But while national columnists panned the Mauer selection at the time, many appear perplexed by the local criticism he receives. ESPN’s David Schoenfield listed him as the fourth-best No. 1 overall selection in 2015. The venerable Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated, said the Twins will have a prosperous honeymoon with Mauer in 2010, a year after he wrote a cover feature on him. “Will Twins fans have to watch a mediocre team or worse because their hometown hero eats up too much of the payroll?” he asked at the time. “No, they shouldn’t worry. The Twins are a smart, efficient organization.”
That honeymoon lasted all of a year (see: leg weakness, bilateral). A lot of that, however, is that the Twins got away from being the smart, efficient organization they were from 2002-10 — something that obviously was not Mauer’s fault.
“Last summer, I became aware of a curious phenomenon: Apparently there are Minnesota Twins fans who either genuinely don’t like Joe Mauer or who view him as some kind of a disappointment. I’m serious,” wrote Jonah Keri for Grantland.com in an appropriately titled post, Be a Good Baseball Fan! Don’t Hate Your Team’s Best Player!, back in 2014.
“We’re talking about the local boy who turned down playing football at Florida State to play baseball for Minnesota, then stayed with the Twins when they were in their neo–Washington Senators phase instead of chasing money and a World Series on the coasts; the guy who won three batting titles, and the 2009 MVP, and led the Twins in WAR in four of the six seasons after Johan Santana got traded.”
This isn’t to say he, or any great player, doesn’t deserve criticism, but occasionally we all need a reality check.
Perhaps it is that he’s under the microscope here. He’s playing at home, where any player is going to face the most scrutiny. We’ve seen him at Cretin High, in the Metrodome and at Target Field. We’ve seen him as an MVP and battling injury two years later. We’ve seen him as a .323/.405/.468 hitter before the concussion and a .267/.353/.380 in the three years after it. Hell, he hit .225/.271/.275 and people were calling for him to retire in April. Then hit .346/.442/.531 in May.
“I feel like I’m striking the ball pretty well,” he told the Pioneer Press a month ago. “You’ve got to try to stick with the process, and hopefully those results change.”
A month later?
“I’ve had a good run,” Mauer told the Pioneer Press last week. “It’s kind of funny because I started off the season probably the best that I can remember feeling-wise — I hit the ball, squared it up with nothing much to show for it. Now they’re starting to fall. Now the results are there.”
The question now becomes: How long can it last?
He’s always been criticized for not hitting for power. He’s no longer behind the plate. At 34, he may be three years away from retirement. He might also play until he’s 40. Regardless of when he hangs it up, he’s been one of the best No. 1 overall picks in MLB history.
Maybe the next guy will be the next Mauer. Maybe he’ll pass on the Twins and become the next Tim Belcher. Most likely he’ll fall somewhere in between. After all, Mauer set a tough standard to follow.
