Is Mauer (or Any Player) Worth It?

The Twins last Sunday finished a contract with their MVP superstar catcher, Joe Mauer. $184 million over 8 years with a no-trade clause. It is the 4th largest contract in MLB history. (A-Rod has both #1 and #2.) The Twins have never been in this kind of situation. They have never been known to spend a lot of money on players. In a smaller market (that Bud Selig tried to downsize out of ten years ago) it was always tough for Twins management to justify big salaries.

Now there is the new Target Field. (Oh what a field it is!) Double the number of season tickets. Many games already sold out for this year. Money looks like it will be more available. So after reading the writing on the wall, they made the BIG move to keep their own home-grown superstar right where he is.

Twins fans have been generally ecstatic. Most could see no way the future had any hope without the bat and presence of Mauer. But it didn't take long for concerns and grumbling to be heard. Maybe Garrison Keillor could give a good explanation for the Minnesota personality that leads to this, but here we are, less than a week later and I have heard concerns.

The biggest? It ruins the Twins. They used to have a "moral" stance against paying the big bucks. None of those shenanigans for these Midwesterners raised on good old-fashioned values. "You won't get me to a game now" one person told me. Which got me thinking about the questions such huge contracts raise....

Is he worth it?

• Is anyone, really? This has always been my gripe with the mega-salaries. I have difficulty thinking about ticket prices that go to make mega-millionaires wealthier (players and owners!) No one is worth their salary, except maybe the President who gets a lot less than the pressures and responsibilities call for.
  

What if the market (i.e. the team owners) supports these salaries?

• Oddly enough it is the owners who really go along with the whole process. Now. They hated it at first. They fought allowing players to be anything but highly paid indentured servants. Curt Flood's famous challenge of the Reserve Clause opened those floodgates. It wasn't long before many owners began to see the value of free trade. They could now offer big bucks to get big players. The advantage of the big market teams was only enhanced.
  

Have the Twins betrayed their own frugal (or cheap?) history?

• While many explained the lower salaries of the Twins as a reflection of Midwestern values, it was, in truth, a combination of being cheap, not having the kind of monetary (TV and fan base) that could afford it. The value was not Midwestern any more than the Yankees represent Eastern Establishment values. It was a plain and simple reflection of financial reality. That is changing. Nothing is betrayed.
  

Is it pure market capitalism at work, except Joe was selling himself, not some goods?

• This is actually more of a statement than a question. The question is in the second half. We have trouble with people selling themselves this way. It seems selfish. It feels greedy. Joe Mauer has the talent to command this kind of salary. He is at the top of the game. There are few who has been able to do what he does. In the great scheme of Major League Baseball today, if anyone is worth this kind of money, Joe Mauer has shown he is in that stratospheric league. Whether salaries should be that high is not Joe's issue. He deserves to be in that group.
  

What if he gets hurt?

• Ah yes. Under it all is the question of fear. A lot is being put into one man. He is only one man. He is not The Team. But at this moment in time he is the franchise. He plays a difficult position. He has done things in these past years that absolutely no catcher has ever done. But then, life is a gamble. I can still remember the front page headline in the New York Daily News when their great catcher Roy Campanella was paralyzed in an auto accident. You can't not take chances.
  

Is it okay to keep paying cheap salaries and not participating in the escalating salaries even if it means you continue to have less than A-Level teams?

• Okay, this is the reverse question, really. It is spoken by a fan who would like his team to be champions and win the World Series. If you can afford to join the money race, but don't, is that being faithful to the fans and communities you live in? The fans want to celebrate winners. Even true-blue, dedicated to the end fans would like to see winning teams. (All those drought years in Green Bay after Lombardi left hurt. We didn't abandon the team, but it would have been better to win!) Twins fans have been loyal. The past decade has seen a significant change. Here we are in the chance of at least half a lifetime. Go for it! To not do so would be to tell the fans that it is more important for the owners to make money than to have a team that moves up in the possibilities of winning the World Series.

As you can guess I have no problem with the Joe Mauer contract within the current system. Yes, there are risks. Yes, there is a great disparity. Fans who earn in a year what Joe will make in four innings supporting these salaries has a certain obscenity. Maybe we are crazy. Maybe changes are needed in the whole economic system of professional sports.

But one move by a team in Minneapolis won't change that. If the fans want to be part of winning, here is a chance. Beyond that, the issues are far too great to be decided by us. I don't know how those will happen short of complete revolt. But that has never happened with sports.

So, with 9 days until the first game of the season, at least we Twins fans can sit back and relax knowing that Joe is around, barring catastrophe, for another 8 seasons. Maybe we can get a World Series in Target Field in that time.

(And, just to note it, Joe will make almost twice as much per year as the Vikings' Starting Quarterback did last season. Which, in comparison per game is quite a bargain.)