Mystery shrouded Byron Buxton when the Minnesota Twins took him second overall in 2012. The Twins had just taken a guy out of Baxley, Ga., who had Paul Bunyan strength and the Flash’s speed. To find yourself in Baxley, you’d have to stray far off I-75 while driving from Jacksonville to Atlanta. Look it up on Google Maps, and Walmart and Hardee’s immediately stand out. The third most prominent structure is Appling County High School, where Buxton developed into a superstar.
The Twins took Royce Lewis first overall in 2017 because he had an “it” factor. Alex Kirilloff hit .563 in high school. Nick Gordon, the son of Tom Gordon and Dee’s younger brother, compared himself to Derek Jeter on draft day. There was also plenty of hype around Joe Mauer when the Twins took him first overall in 2001. You know it all by now. He never struck out in high school. Bobby Bowden had recruited him to play quarterback at Florida State, etc. We were all more familiar with him before draft day than Lewis, Kirilloff, and Gordon.
It would be easier to drive down to St. Paul to see Mauer behind the plate than it would be to see Lewis play at JSerra in San Juan Capistrano, Ca., Kirlloff in Plum, Pa., or Gordon at Olympia in Central Florida. Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Orlando are hardly far-flung locations like Baxley. But even if you never saw Mauer play at Cretin-Derham Hall, it was a familiar location – across from The Nook on Hamline. It’s easier to take a wrong turn and drive down St. Albert Street than end up in Appling County.
More pertinently, we saw Mauer every day during the summer once he broke into the big leagues in 2005. That was fun from 2006 to 2010 when the Twins won division titles. Mauer hit .334/.416/.491 and won three batting titles as a catcher. There was a lot of relief and excitement when he signed an eight-year, $184 million extension after his MVP season in 2009 instead of leaving for Boston or New York.
But $23 million eventually became a source of frustration. Mauer hit .327/.407/.481 and made the All-Star team four times in seven seasons before the extension. However, he suffered bilateral leg weakness, hit .287/.360/.368, and only played 85 games in 2011. He returned to All-Star form in 2012 and 2013, but the team had fallen apart and only won 66 games in those seasons.
Mauer moved from catcher to first base after suffering a concussion at the end of the 2013 season. He hit .290/.373/.405 from 2011 to 2014, earning two All-Star nods. But the Twins only had two winning seasons during that timeframe. They had a surprising 83-win season in 2015, Buxton’s rookie year, when Mauer was still recovering from the concussion.
However, they didn’t make the playoffs, and Minnesota had a total system failure a year later. Minnesota let longtime GM Terry Ryan go, and Mauer and the Twins bounced back during Derek Falvey and Thad Levine’s first season in 2017. Mauer hit .305/.384/.417 at age 34, leading Minnesota back to the playoffs for the first time since 2010 – when the New York Yankees eliminated them again.
It would have been nearly impossible for Mauer to live up to his draft-day hype. In the end, he never won a playoff game. People grew tired of him hitting .267/.353/.380 as a $23 million first baseman from 2014 to 2016. Mauer hit 28 home runs in the 2009 season, the final year at the Metrodome, but he never hit more than 11 at Target Field. The Bomba Squad won 101 games the year after he retired. Juiced ball or not, that team was fun to watch, even though that season also ended in playoff failure.
It’s hard to blame someone who watched Mauer go 0-for-4 in a late-August blowout loss to the Detroit Tigers in 2014 for feeling upset with a $23 million player. Still, it baffled national media members, 76.1% of whom voted Mauer as a first-ballot Hall of Famer, that local fans would dislike Mauer. It didn’t help that local scribes claimed the Twins were cheap for choosing Mauer over Mark Prior in the draft. Or that the player he replaced, A.J. Pierzynski, won the World Series with the Chicago White Sox in 2005.
But the biggest gripe seems to be that the team was supposed to take things to the next level once Target Field opened. The Twins could build a champion around Mauer and Justin Morneau with increased revenue. Instead, Morneau suffered from a concussion in July 2010, and Mauer had bilateral leg weakness in 2011. Some people had turned on the M&M boys by 2012. Micahel Cuddyer and Joe Nathan left after the 2011 season, and Minnesota traded Morneau to Pittsburgh in 2013.
There was a misunderstanding that the Twins couldn’t build around Mauer because of his contract. Minnesota just failed to capitalize on having a Hall of Fame catcher. Many of their mistakes from the Bill Smith era and Terry Ryan’s second stint didn’t manifest until Mauer’s extension kicked in. But people are giving Mauer a lot of appreciation now, as they should. Many more would have seen him in a different light had the Twins won more during the second half of his career.
Still, many of Minnesota’s shortcomings during Mauer’s Target Field stint were organizational shortcomings. The foul tip that changed his career was an unfortunate incident. Mauer’s contract expired, and he suffered another concussion before Rocco Baldelli took over and helped the team breakthrough in the playoffs. Ultimately, familiarity bred contempt with Mauer for some people. Others are grateful he was the first modern superstar who decided to stay home.
