The Elephant in the Room: Joe Mauer

[strumdatjaguar]

Does he rebound in 2014???  I'm inclined to believe that 2014 was an anomaly.  He'll return to near his old self next year, with a batting average of over .310 but 12 or fewer HRs.  His defense will improve slightly. 

[Twinsoholic]

The real question is what if he plays the same or worse this upcoming season? It is certainly possible that he will no longer be a remarkable player. I hope he does return to form offensively, but you never know.

 

If he does not return to form offensively, then is he the best the Twins can do at first base? That should be a masher position. He seemed stuck on lining balls to left field or striking out (uncharacteristically). Does he know how to pull the ball? Until he starts doing that, left fielders are going to keep shagging a lot of line drives and fly balls off of his bat.

[PseudoSABR]

I expect Joe to be much improved.  My guess is there were more lingering concerns of concussion symptoms than publicly known.  

[Bark's Lounge]

Does he rebound in 2014???  I'm inclined to believe that 2014 was an anomaly.  He'll return to near his old self next year, with a batting average of over .310 but 12 or fewer HRs.  His defense will improve slightly. 

I would imagine that most posters on this site would be pleased with the statistical outcome you have predicted. Saying that - I think a lot of us, deep down inside, hope for a little bit more than that.

 

We have seen greatness out of Joe Mauer and I don't think he is too old to conjur up some of that greatness again, unless the injuries he has sustained over the years have permanently eradicated some of his physical prowess. I can accept good, but greatness is obviously better.

 

I don't know if his down performance in the 2014 season was the result of his concussion in 2013, injuries, or defensive shifts... maybe it is a culmination of all three. If it is the result of the shifts and I feel that is at least a small part of the problem, I hope he watches game video from 2014 and makes some adjustments in his approach that will not make him as susceptible to fall prey to the defensive shifts.

 

I still believe in Joe and I hope for him the best, but I always, always prepare for the worse... It sucks to be disappointed.

[stringer bell]

Yeah, I agree with Bark.  I wrote about Mauer early this offseason and my primary thought was that Mauer, really for the first time in his career, will have to make adjustments.  Yes, he needs to pull more pitches, and yes, he should swing at more meat pitches early in counts.  Yes, he needs to be in the best shape of his life so that some of those 350 foot fly balls find the seats.  I can't see him hitting .270 again, but I can see him as productive with an average around .300, if he drives in more runs and has more extra-base hits. 

 

Mauer looked like a certain future Hall-of-Famer, but continued futility might make him into another Dale Murphy, who never made it to the Hall. 

 

If Mauer remains a .270 hitter with big platoon splits, he could become a platoon player as soon as some time this year and the #3 spot in the lineup could be forfeited to someone else.

[gunnarthor]

I'm less optimistic.  His babip was pretty good this year, so he wasn't really unlucky.  His strikes out more, walks less and has lost a lot of power.  And he can't stay healthy. Pretty bad signs for a rebound at this point as he'll be 32 next year.  A lot of good players were done at 32.  I had hoped that he'd age like Molitor but that's looking less likely.  My guess is he puts up a .280/.350/.390 line and plays about 125 games. 

[James Richter]

Reasons to be optimistic: HR/FB was about half his career rate - we'd expect that to normalize. His BABIP on liners was really low, and he hit plenty of liners. He was way better in the second half in terms of K/BB. He saw far more first-pitch strikes than any other season of his career - that probably comes down.

 

Reasons to be pessimistic: The low BABIP on liners is quite possibly due to defensive shifts. Why not throw him a first-pitch strike? The last 2 years, he's been swinging at more pitches outside the strike zone and making less contact, and also making less contact on pitches within the zone.

 

Soooo... he should make some adjustments. For his career, he's a .385 hitter with a .924 OPS when he puts the 1st or 2nd pitch of an AB in play, but he's only done that in 17.8% of his PA. Increasing that percentage this year seems like an easy place to start, especially if the league is going to keep feeding him a first-pitch strike 59% of the time.

[TheLeviathan]

I'm less optimistic.  His babip was pretty good this year, so he wasn't really unlucky.  His strikes out more, walks less and has lost a lot of power.  And he can't stay healthy. Pretty bad signs for a rebound at this point as he'll be 32 next year.  A lot of good players were done at 32.  I had hoped that he'd age like Molitor but that's looking less likely.  My guess is he puts up a .280/.350/.390 line and plays about 125 games. 

 

I worry I'm closer to this.  It's not just the concussions either, there were concerns he had back injuries and soreness.  That's a hard thing to keep from nagging you as well.  

 

He cut down on the Ks and had a better second half overall and for that there is reason to hope, but we may have to adjust our expectations for what constitutes a "good" season from Mauer.

[KGB]

I'm less optimistic.  His babip was pretty good this year, so he wasn't really unlucky.  His strikes out more, walks less and has lost a lot of power.  And he can't stay healthy. Pretty bad signs for a rebound at this point as he'll be 32 next year.  A lot of good players were done at 32.  I had hoped that he'd age like Molitor but that's looking less likely.  My guess is he puts up a .280/.350/.390 line and plays about 125 games. 

 

I'm in this camp also, the signs just don't point to a positive outcome.  Even in 2013, if it wasn't for his .383 babip, he would have hit under .300  The strike outs are a major concern.  But Morneau figured it out last year and cut down his strike outs and won a battling title, so it's possible but it's going to take Mauer to change his batting approach.  Hopefully Molitor can get through to him and make the necessary changes.

[D. Hocking]

I am a little more wary that his decrease in production is more to the body breaking down, whether it is back or knee or age or a combination.

 

That said, there are a number of other reasons to hope that is the case.  The concussion, even if he was not having overt symptoms,baseball is such a reflex sport, it could have been affecting him without him even being aware of it.  Also, even if he had  no concussion symptoms at all last year, it took away a good chunk of being able to do anything on his off-season.

 

He was learning a new position.  That would not only be mentally tasking which could effect his offense, I heard a couple of people say speculate he was trying to hit more like a traditional first baseman and was not playing to his strengths.  The fact that he felt pressure to make the home all-star game as a first baseman probably magnified that.

 

I think the back and oblique also were a factor.  I don't think the oblique strains really fully heal until the off season.  This could be a positive is they were fluke one time things.  If they are going to be recurring problems due to his body breaking down due to age or the wear and tear of being catcher than we might see the Joe of old again.

 

I think he is going to have  a bounce back season and be a decent player, but I am afraid  what will now be considered a good season for Joe would have been considered a mediocre or average season in the past.  I think there were a number of unique factors that contributed to last year's season, but I think age and possible catcher wear-and-tear are always going to be a factor as well.

[jharaldson]

I have seen many people blame his poor year on the concussion in this an other threads so I decided to look at his stats at the end of the year.  If you take his last 30 games Mauer had an OPS of .728.

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/statsd.aspx?playerid=1857&position=C&type=2&gds=2014-08-26&gde=2014-09-28&season=

 

This tells me that his poor performance last year is not due only to the concussion.  I don't think he will be as bad next year but I wouldn't expect an OPS over .800.

[jay]

.290/.375/.450

[nicksaviking]

Mauer's strikeouts are concerning.  It's not the first time an aging player trended upward in the strikeout department, and it's not always a death knell, but usually the guys who remain succesful, do so because the strikeouts conincide with some late blooming power.

 

On the otherhand, his BB% wasn't much off his career norm and his IBB% was actually up, and both numbers saw large increases in the 2nd half.  Mauer may have been pitched around more than usual last year and failed to take full advantage of the free passes, particularly early on.  The collective .696 OPS from the 4th spot in the lineup probably was doing him no favors.

 

I'm skeptical of a full rebound, but considering Mauer's production has always been at least partially tied with his on-base numbers, I'm going to guess his turnaround is going to be more dependant than we may like on the development of Arcia, Vargas, Sano, Plouffe or whoever gets tasked with batting behind him.   

[gunnarthor]

My concern is that Mauer isn't adjusting to defenses well.  You see that his babip was about where it usually is but his iso was really low.  I'm worried that the shifts are catching everything hit hard (doubles down the LF line) so Mauer responded by hitting more singles and going for less power.  I think Mauer needs to alter his approach at the plate more to try and hit the ball to RF and the CF gaps.  I'm not sure he can/will do that.  (Someone smarter than me could look at hit charts for a better guess).

 

If you want to be in the glass half full camp, you can suggest that Mauer can still probably put up something close to a .400 OBP and, if he did that over 150 games, that's be pretty darn good.

[bird]

I have seen many people blame his poor year on the concussion in this an other threads so I decided to look at his stats at the end of the year.  If you take his last 30 games Mauer had an OPS of .728.

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/statsd.aspx?playerid=1857&position=C&type=2&gds=2014-08-26&gde=2014-09-28&season=

 

This tells me that his poor performance last year is not due only to the concussion.  I don't think he will be as bad next year but I wouldn't expect an OPS over .800.

 

Even though his moniker is General Soreness in my household, I've become convinced, like a lot of you, that his primary issue is a failure, and perhaps a refusal, to adjust his thinking, and his approach, and that his performance decline has less to do with injury and/or physical decline.

 

First pitch strikes. Big sigh. And 97.327% of his line drives are hit to an area with a radius of 7.334 feet according to BirdGraphs. But even more maddening to BirdGraphs is his clear failure to adjust his mentality with runners on base. According to BirdGraphs, he still is just as happy to coax a walk in that situation as he is to plunk one of his liners just out of the reach of the left fielder. Until BirdGraphs sees that he's jerked a few mediocre fastballs to right with men on, I'll remain in the camp of the less optimistic. Just hoping that, absent Gardy's fawning over how great he is, General Soreness will be up to the task of changing his stubborn ways.

 

Gotta warn you, though, that BirdGraphs can be a bit temperamental.

[nicksaviking]

Just hoping that, absent Gardy's fawning over how great he is, General Soreness will be up to the task of changing his stubborn ways.

 

I think there is some hope here.  We'll never know if Gardy made it a rule to let Mauer do his own thing, and if he did, the practice may continue into the future.  However, perhpas if there was a "don't touch the sacred cow" approach with the previous management, the idea will be scrapped now that one of the few men who can claim to be a better hitter than Mauer is in charge.

[gunnarthor]

Man, I always thought people ripped Gardy for not being nice enough to Mauer.

[Linus]

Who knows about any of this, of course but Mauer's experience post concussion is looking eerily similar to Morneau's.  When you think of the micro second timing involved with recognizing and hitting a pitch, it is quite possible there are concussion effects that they player can't even recognize.  I hope this is the case with Joe - sure seemed like it with Justin.

 

I will say that the shifts have effected him.  Its crazy how many balls he hits to a very small area in left field, where everyone happens to be standing now.

 

The other factor I noticed, and line up to call me a homer, etc. is the strike zone.  Without looking it up, it seemed like he took far more called strikes than I remember, some of which were horrible.  I know there is a new crop of younger umpires in the league and I am wondering if that has something to do with it.  He relies on his eye so much more than most players.

[brvama]

I side with the improve camp on Mauer. His concussion problems set him back on his off-season training and conditioning. This year he should be able to come in ready to play. Also he will be another year removed from concussion. And time is important with these injuries.

 

As far as production, Joe should trend back to his norm minus age performance deterioration. And certainly having a HOFer leading you and in your ear gives hope that some past issues can be rectified, ie, first pitch strikes, shifts, etc. Unless he's stubborn to a fault, Joe has the makeup to be the best he can be, as do most MLB stars. Thus I expect a much better season for him. 310/380/425

[ashbury]

When I saw the beginning of the title to this thread was The Elephant In The Room, I assumed it was going to be about Kennys Vargas.  Mauer hasn't gained all that much weight.

[Brandon]

.290/.375/.450

I have .300/ .375/ .400

 

I don't think he hits for much power. 30-35 2bs and 5-7HR won't give you a .160 isolated power.

[davidc3915]

I have .300/ .375/ .400

 

I don't think he hits for much power. 30-35 2bs and 5-7HR won't give you a .160 isolated power.

I second you, Brandon

[tobi0040]

I second you, Brandon

 

If someone offered me a .775 OPS out of Mauer next year it would be very tempting.

[Brandon]

If someone offered me a .775 OPS out of Mauer next year it would be very tempting.

I would be content with a .775 OPS from Mauer.  I am fine with anything over .750.  You start going lower its going to be because his OBP is dropping further. If that drops to the .350 range and Slugs sub .400 due to lower batting average then he will not be providing near enough value to justify staying at 1B full time and possibly even a starting job full time despite his contract. He could need to change his approach to add power or possibly could be a bench payer the last 2 years of his contract.

[tobi0040]

I would be content with a .775 OPS from Mauer.  I am fine with anything over .750.  You start going lower its going to be because his OBP is dropping further. If that drops to the .350 range and Slugs sub .400 due to lower batting average then he will not be providing near enough value to justify staying at 1B full time and possibly even a starting job full time despite his contract. He could need to change his approach to add power or possibly could be a bench payer the last 2 years of his contract.

 

Call me cynical, but I think Mauer would need an OPS in the mid 600's before he is a bench player.

[jorgenswest]

Steamer projects 284/370/403.

[jokin]

Steamer projects 284/370/403.

 

So Steamer is optimistically on the "Joe is back!" bandwagon?

[JB_Iowa]

Molitor on Mauer (via Berardino):

 

http://blogs.twincities.com/twins/2014/12/08/twinsights-know-wants-win-paul-molitor-says-joe-mauer/

[Secondary User]

Reasons to be optimistic: HR/FB was about half his career rate - we'd expect that to normalize. His BABIP on liners was really low, and he hit plenty of liners. He was way better in the second half in terms of K/BB. He saw far more first-pitch strikes than any other season of his career - that probably comes down.

 

Reasons to be pessimistic: The low BABIP on liners is quite possibly due to defensive shifts. Why not throw him a first-pitch strike? The last 2 years, he's been swinging at more pitches outside the strike zone and making less contact, and also making less contact on pitches within the zone.

 

Soooo... he should make some adjustments. For his career, he's a .385 hitter with a .924 OPS when he puts the 1st or 2nd pitch of an AB in play, but he's only done that in 17.8% of his PA. Increasing that percentage this year seems like an easy place to start, especially if the league is going to keep feeding him a first-pitch strike 59% of the time.

 

Looking at batting average on 1st or 2nd pitches is a deceiving statistic.  You have to realize that you are reducing the negative results in your subset.  You can't strike out on the 1st or 2nd pitch in the at bat.  In 2014, the league-wide K% was 20%.  So you're using batting average, which measures an entire at bat, while you're removing nearly 20% of possible negative results.  This is going to cause your BA to (likely) be markedly higher than your overall BA.  Since you're removing K's, you'd expect this number to look a lot more like BABIP, though even better since we're keeping HR in the equation.  It essentially becomes a "batting average on balls made contact with" (BABMC)

 

His BA on the first two pitches in the count is .385.  Again, remember that we're basically removing the chance of striking out. Looking at his career BABMC, you get a value of .369.  Some improvement, yes, but not colossal.  Especially that when you consider the quality of pitchers who end up being susceptible to patterning like first pitch cookies.

[jay]

I have .300/ .375/ .400

 

I don't think he hits for much power. 30-35 2bs and 5-7HR won't give you a .160 isolated power.

His career average is .141. It was .153 just a year ago in 2013. .160 is just a hair past that.

 

If he trades a little average for power as so many here are dreaming on, it's easily attainable. He can get there with 13-15 HRs.