Sunshine on a Cloudy Day


After dropping three out of five in an up and down series with the Tigers and falling into a three-way Wild Card tie with the two scariest teams in the field, I'm once again left looking for some positives onto which I can cling.

One exciting development was Scott Baker's head-to-head duel with fellow future front-liner Justin Verlander. While Verlander has the greater pedigree with a sparkling college career and quick ascent through the minors, Baker has emerged as a stud in the Twins system and had a strong enough outing Saturday to beat Verlander and earn a split in the double header. Although I generally think the scout-heavy approach to player evaluation has a lot of unanswered questions, Minnesota's success is quantifiable over several years, so they clearly do something consistently better than other teams. Baker is yet another tribute to Terry Ryan's staff, as they brought in a prospect and churned out a valuable major league asset.

Another exciting occurrence from the same game was they strong outing by Justin Morneau. His slump hasn't been one of those plodding, sleepwalking types; his stat sheet has been barren since early in the season. Perhaps if he only faced pitchers with whom he shared a first name he could snap out of it, as he went 2-3, slugging a HR, a 2B and drawing a walk. It was his first HR since July 2nd, a drought that endured over 60 ABs. His patience has been shaky, yielding only 3.6 pitches per PA, and he's only hitting line drives 17.8% of the time (worse than Mauer, Lecroy, Stewart, Punto, Cuddyer and even Castro among regulars) which is a troubling number for the team's most potent bat. Somehow Torii Hunter has remained productive despite putting up even worse numbers than Morneau in these categories. But I promised I would look for bright spots, and Morneau's enduring struggles certainly do not qualify.

One player than can always bring me out of the doldrums is this season's preeminent bright spot, Joe Mauer. He has blazed through July at a .378/.462/.478 clip, making him one of the hottest offensive players in the league at the most strenuous defensive position and in the middle of a struggling lineup. Mauer leads the team in VORP by a margin of 28.9 to 22.3 over Hunter. Since VORP is a cumulative stat, that means he has been especially productive with only a little more than 3/4 of the PAs that Hunter has. Playing time hasn't been nearly the concern we expected it to be for Mauer, though, as his previously troublesome knee has held up well. Any residual pain doesn't show up in his speed stats, as he's third on the team in SBs and first in SB success rate (7 swipes in 8 tries). Defense is another strength for Mauer, as his Rate2 of 106 reinforces his spotless defensive reputation, as does the fact that he has thrown out more than 60% of prospective base-stealers. He sees 3.9 pitches per PA while hitting line drives 22.8% of the time with a team-leading BABIP of .342. All of these stats indicate that he's a hitter mature beyond his years.

Obviously I'm not the first to heap praise on Mauer, but as thrilling as its been to see him live up to expectations this soon and in spite of an unfortunate injury, I think it's even more exciting to look at where he can go over the next several years. BP's PECOTA uses historically comparable players to construct a profile of how a player's career will most likely progress with a fairly high degree of success. A high similarity score is somewhere around 50, while a player who goes down near 20 is an historically unique player. Mauer's similarity score is 18, demonstrating just how rare it is for a catcher to display such a mature skill set (patience, some power, and exceptional fielding) at such a young age. While his most similar player is Mike Scioscia, which is a disconcerting start unless you expect Mauer's greatest achievement to come as a manager. Further down the list, though, Mauer's comparables include all time greats such as Bill Freehan, Joe Torre, Gary Carter, Pudge Rodriguez, Ted Simmons and Johnny Bench. Bench and Torre eventually moved to third base, a move some have proposed for Mauer, and the others all saw more playing time at other positions later in their careers. With the knee apparently sound, it seems that we're a few years from having to answer these questions, as Mauer should remain firmly entrenched behind the plate as long as it doesn't inhibit his offensive contributions.
As Mauer grows and adds more power to his offensive repetoire, he becomes even more valuable. PECOTA projects out for five years into the future, and Mauer's Equivalent Average (which takes all offensive contributions into account) and Wins Added over Replacement Player grow all the way through the projection. As a frame of reference, he currently sports a .293 EQA, but the weighted mean projection for his EQA in his age 26 season is .312. Additionally, the statistical probability that he will have a breakout year (roughly a 20% increase in offensive contribution) grows all the way to 33% in his age 26 season. So as good as Mauer has been already, we have only scratched the surface of his tremendous potential.

My only remaining concern is that someone will give him a ridiculous nickname like Joe Cool and miss the opportunity to bestow a memorable moniker on a remarkable player. Luckily, his name doesn't lend itself to the first letter, first syllable albatross (J-Mau is a disaster). Since he exhibits such a quintessential skill set and seemingly great personality, I favor a name that presents him as an ambassador for the sport, something along the lines of Baseball Joe or Joe Longball if he becomes a HR threat later in his career. Any suggestions here would be appreciated, because someone as unique as Mauer shouldn't suffer from the dumbing down of sportswriting.