Mauer vs the Other #3 Hitters

[John Bonnes]

It turns out that Joe Mauer isn't doing too poorly in WPA compared to the other #3 hitters in the AL. There are a lot of guys struggling a lot worse. Here each team, who has batter #3 for them the most, and their WPA through 4/27:

 

TBR - Longoria 1.01

TEX - Hamilton 1.01

DET - Cabrera 0.86

CHW - Dunn 0.42

BAL - Markakis 0.41

MIN - Mauer 0.28

CLE - Choo 0.03

BOS - Gonzalez -0.01

OAK - Reddick -0.16

TOR - Bautista -0.18

KCR - Hosmer -0.29

LAA - Pujols -0.3

SEA - Ichiro -0.52

NYY - Cano -0.53

[Fire Dan Gladden]

Looking at the bottom half of this list, I find it hard to believe those names will stay down there for long.

[Boom Boom]

Hypothetically, if the Twins had the top 3 guys on that list (Longoria, Hamilton, and Cabrera) along with Mauer, which one would bat 3rd?

[gunnarthor]

Hypothetically, if the Twins had the top 3 guys on that list (Longoria, Hamilton, and Cabrera) along with Mauer, which one would bat 3rd?

Span, Mauer, Cabrera, Hamilton, Longoria. That would be a really fun 1-5.

[Boom Boom]

Span, Mauer, Cabrera, Hamilton, Longoria. That would be a really fun 1-5.

That would be fun, but Gardy is still the manager. So Carroll is probably still batting 2nd.

[Mike Sixel]

I'll bet money Pujols doesn't stay down there on the list....lots of money. I'd guess most of those don't.....

[StormJH1]

Since the entire post was premised upon the value of WPA as a statistic, I referred to this FanGraphs explanation and had myself a good laugh:

 

Why you should care: WPA takes into account the importance of each situation in the game. A walk off home run is going to be weighted more then a home run in a game that has already gotten out of hand. This makes it a great tool for determining how valuable a player was to his team’s win total.

 

Something tells me the sabermetrics community's uncompromising love for Joe Mauer is not a product of all of the "walk-off homers" he hits...or the ones he hits in blow-out games! I readily concede that Joe Mauer is awesome at "trying not to get out".

 

So, if that list based on 20-odd games is to be trusted, Nick Markakis is better than Mauer, Puljos, Adrian Gonzalez, Hosmer, Bautista, and Cano. Got it.

 

I don't think Mauer is a "bad" #3 hitter, I just think that one thing that is very difficult to measure with any kind of statistic is mentality at the plate. Morneau in his prime was an example of a guy who could mash for the fences (and maybe strike out), or prolong the inning with a base hit when we were down by multiple runs. Mauer's approach, almost always, is to prolong innings so that other guys get a chance to drive him in. That doesn't make him bad, but ideally he'd be a great #2 hitter if we had better options at #3. Actually, a healthy Morneau, in many ways, would be a great #3 hitter.

[darin617]

How about changing the title to Mauer VS other #2 hitters.