2017 Twins Player Predictions: Joe Mauer

I say he does what he did last year, rate wise. Counting wise? Adjust for 120 games.

So, about the 18-20th best 1B in the league.

As for Park staying, they got lucky no one claimed him, I guess. Because if they thought he was going to be here, they never would have cut* him.

*or whatever fancy word MLB uses for what the transaction was.

I knew Hrbek was big, but he's so big he occupies third and first place in walks? I am guessing first is Harmon? total guess.

Fangraphs projection:

Name PA AVG OBP SLG wOBA Bat BsR Fld WAR
Joe Mauer 455 .268 .355 .390 .322 -0.5 -0.5 1.3 0.8

They project the Twins to be 18th in 1B WAR this year, give or take. 

Mauer will still get enouhh at bats to qualify for the batting title. But they will sit him more against lefties and he will swap with park at DH 30 to 40 games. I see mauer playing in 140 games with 25 to 30 as DH. So 520AB and approx .280 ave/ .350 obp/ .420 slg. Im rooting for 35 2bs and 10 -15Hrs (a little optimistic on power i know).

Mauer will still get enouhh at bats to qualify for the batting title. But they will sit him more against lefties and he will swap with park at DH 30 to 40 games. I see mauer playing in 140 games with 25 to 30 as DH. So 520AB and approx .280 ave/ .350 obp/ .420 slg. Im rooting for 35 2bs and 10 -15Hrs (a little optimistic on power i know).

that would make him 10-15% more productive than last year on a rate basis! That seems optimistic, but I hope you are right.

I am not able to project Mauer's hitting for 2017.  I do not think he will improve except as Molitor removes him from games where he is destined to fail.  So I went crazy trying to see how players decline and learned a lot.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/hitters-no-longer-peak-only-decline/ has a key statement - In the past few seasons, hitters no longer improve once they arrive in the majors. Instead, their performance is constant until they begin to decline, which, on average, is at 26 years old.   (This is an reminder of why players like Vargas need to play now if we want to maximize their potential.)

Since Mauer strained his body by being a catcher I looked at the aging curve for catchers - http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/catcher-aging-is-a-curve-not-a-cliff/ which has an interesting insight - As we can see, peak offensive levels are from 25 to 28, as is pretty commonly accepted, and then there’s a gradual decline as a player gets beyond those years. But notice the trend of the blue line (catchers) compared to all position players (the red line); they move basically in lock-step from 27 to 32, after which point catchers actually age better than the norms for non-catchers.  

And - Good 34 year olds don’t regularly become bad 35 year olds. In general, you should expect players to decline at something like +0.5 per season. If they’re especially injury prone and their bodies are breaking down, limiting future playing time, maybe you knock off +0.75 WAR per season. 

The next site I looked at said - hough he's not part of the study, it's worth pointing out that the decline outlined in the above graphs applies to Pujols. His 9.4 WAR in his age-29 season in 2009 was the highest of his career, but since then, his WAR totals have been trending in the wrong direction. He had a 7.3 WAR at age 30, a 5.1 WAR at age 31 and a 4.6 WAR this past season at age 32. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1539301-putting-mlb-aging-theories-to-the-test-on-star-players

This next piece seems to indicate that players decline, but flatten for a period in the thirties http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/instagraphs/catcher-aging-curves-in-the-mainstream/  the relative production from 32-35 is pretty stable, and as others have shown, framing skills seem mostly immune to aging. So, while the downturn in aging curves might be bad news for a 32 year old catcher. Of course Mauer is not a catcher so his pitch framing and other catching skills cannot overcome his physical decline (but give hope for Castro).

But Mauer also had a concussion - "Recent work, however, has called into question the assertion that full recovery after sport concussion without persistent adverse effects is the norm."   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3685434/

And lastly another site may apply to Joe - ""Although players who sustain a concussion may be symptom-free and cleared by MLB [Major League Baseball] protocol to return to play, the residual effects of concussion on the complex motor skills required for batting may still be a problem," said principal investigator Dr. Jeffrey Bazarian, an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of Rochester in New York."  http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20141126/harm-from-baseball-concussions-may-linger-study-finds

With that in mind I think we cannot expect upswings from Joe at this stage, but we should understand that this great players has many factors leading to his current production. 

.750 to .780 is a slight decline from whaat he put up before getting injured last year. The real question is how much will he play this year and how much of that will be at DH since Park or Vargas can both play 1B.