MANKATO — The good news is: The Twins have their first official workouts of spring training today.

The bad news is: The Twins and Joe Mauer have yet to agree on a contract extension.

I’m not sure how “bad” that news really is. It’s quite easy to imagine a scenario in which a long-term deal for Mauer winds up biting the Twins, and vice versa. The percentage of five-years-or-more contracts that satisfy both player and team throughout the deal is depressingly low.

Which makes sense. It’s relatively easy to predict how a player will do next season and progressively difficult further out. A fair contact to both sides in year one can — and often does — become unbalanced a few years later.

And that’s even more true with a catcher.

Mauer turns 27 in April. A five-year deal starting in 2011 would run through 2015, when he’ll be 32. A 10-year deal, such as the one that Mark Rosen claimed a couple of weeks ago had been worked out, would run through Mauer’s age 37 season.

Mauer should be one of the top- paid players in the game for the next few seasons. But should he be five years out, seven years out, 10 years out?

If the two sides want a “legacy contract” — the term has been tossed around this winter as indicative of the intent to work a deal that will tie Mauer to the franchise throughout his career — how do they pay Mauer for the greatness anticipated for his prime and protect the franchise during his inevitable decline?

As a colleague said when I was talking about this last week, “fair” has nothing to do with it. That’s not the goal of either side in the negotiations. But if both sides get what they want, and (big “if” here) accurately predict the course of Mauer’s career, fair is what they’ll get.

I made a list of 14 great catchers since the advent of the lively ball and looked at their aging patterns. While there are myriad individual differences, the general theme is this:

• The hitting starts falling off around age 30.
• The more games they caught in their early 20s, the less effective they were in their 30s. Odd as it may sound, injuries can extend a great catcher’s career.
• Few remain a regular behind the dish into their mid 30s.
• Even fewer successfully convert to other positions as they age.
• The current catchers in the study aged better.

(For space reasons, I’m detailing the individual catchers in my blog.)

My conclusions from this review:

• We can reasonably assume that Mauer has six prime seasons left.
• I expect Mauer to have a slower decline in his 30s than most of the older catchers experienced, because he has better protective equipment, has access to better medical care, is in better condition and — perhaps most of all — he hasn’t been abused. But there will be a decline, and it could be precipitous.
• The Twins should not assume that they can get their money’s worth out of an eight- or 10-year contract by shifting Mauer to another position halfway through. It just doesn’t work.

A fair contract, then, might run something like this: Five seasons at top dollar, two years at a lower level, two more at a still lower level, one more at an even lower level.

And then the two sides can dress it up with playing time incentives, option clauses to extend the contract and other goodies.

Of course, that’s easy for me to say. It’s not my money. Well, the vast bulk of it isn’t. 



Edward Thoma is a Free Press staff writer. He is at 344-6377 or at ethoma@mankatofreepress.com. He also has a baseball blog at www.mankatofreepress.com/ethomabaseball/