Thoma: Our abnormal reaction to Mauer’s normal greatness

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Thoma: Our abnormal reaction to Mauer’s normal greatness

By Edward Thoma Free Press Staff Writer The Mankato Free Press Sun Jul 22, 2012, 11:26 PM CDT

— Bill James decades ago took note of a bizarre sports phenomenon: The best players get blamed for the faults of their team.

One example of this today is Joe Mauer.

Mauer, viewed objectively, has already done the heavy lifting for his eventual enshrinement in Cooperstown. He has as many batting titles as every other catcher in baseball history put together (three) and two of the other three would not be deemed eligible by modern standards. He has an MVP award and a handful of Gold Gloves on his resume, and he hasn’t turned 30 yet.

Yet there is a vocal faction of Twins followers — a minority egged on by a few radio loudmouths more interested in generating heat than light — that finds flaws in No. 7 no matter what.

Mauer came into Friday with a slash line of .329/.416/.457. He leads the American League in on-base percentage, the single most important offensive stat. His OPS (On-base Plus Slugging) is one point off his career average, and it is 40 percent better than the league average.

He is a great player having his normal great year, yet it appears that many Twins followers cannot accept that.

The Twins, of course, are having a second straight lousy season in the standings, and Mauer was certainly a factor in last season’s decline. It seems pretty obvious today that when he said last year he was hurting, he was telling the truth. He missed almost half the games, and wasn’t near his usual self when he did play.

This summer has been a different story. He’s been in the lineup almost daily — catching half the games, playing first or DHing the other half — and hitting his career averages almost precisely. Which, since offense overall is down, means he’s further above the norm than he usually is.

The team is still losing far too often for anybody’s satisfaction, but it’s not Mauer’s fault.

The three catcher system

One of the complaints I’ve heard about Mauer is that he isn’t catching enough. That this complaint comes largely from the same people who used to complain that Mauer should be playing other positions to stay in the lineup is symptomatic of the blindness of the critics, but never mind.

Roughly speaking, Ron Gardenhire splits the duties thusly:

Drew Butera (a good receiver but a weak hitter), handles Francisco Liriano. Mauer and Ryan Doumit (a good left-handed hitter who is a weak defensive catcher) split the other four games behind the dish, with whoever isn’t catching generally the designated hitter.

This arrangement spares Mauer the physical beating that comes from Liriano’s habit of misfiring pitches into the dirt. It keeps Mauer’s bat in the lineup without the grind of catching six days a week.

It justifies the decision to give Doumit a contract extension — he’s a good hitter for a catcher, and a decent catcher for a DH.

How well the system will work if the Twins trade Liriano in the next few days is another matter. Butera’s value in this mix comes largely from letting him serve as the human backstop on all those bouncing breaking balls.

Edward Thoma (344-6377; ethoma@mankatofreepress.com) maintains his Baseball Outsider blog at fpbaseballoutsider.blogspot.com. Follow him on Twitter @bboutsider.

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