Joe Mauer Makes His First Hall of Fame Entrance

Joe Mauer retired following the 2018 Major League Baseball season. Less than a year later, constituents were gathered at Target Field where the Minnesota Twins were retiring the number “7” forever. That move, to make sure no one would ever wear Mauer’s number again, serves as a much greater reminder of who Mauer was on the field.

On Saturday, Mauer will join 37 other members of Minnesota’s Hall of Fame. The group includes broadcasters, players, and executives. Mauer’s enshrinement is a straightforward one, as he was among the best to ever wear a Twins jersey. What is neat about the timing is that Minnesota is bringing Mauer into their Hall of Fame during the same yearly cycle that he will be on the ballot for Cooperstown.

When the BBWAA gets their official ballots for the next voting cycle, Mauer’s name will be listed along with Adrian Beltre, David Wright, Chase Utley, and even former Twins teammates Denard Span and Bartolo Colon. Many of the first-year players don’t have much of a hope to see a bronze plaque in Cooperstown, but like Beltre, Mauer should go in on his first ballot.

Although Mauer’s case for enshrinement in Cooperstown has been debated by plenty of analysts across baseball, he seems more likely than not to get in. His career was stunted by injury, but Mauer was one of the best offensive catchers of all-time, and has three batting titles to show for it. He won an MVP, and nearly became the third player ever (joining Placido Polanco and Darin Erstad) to win Gold Glove awards at multiple positions.

Playing in just shy of 1,900 career games, Mauer doesn’t have many of the counting stats typically aligned with automatic induction into The Hall. He is well short of 3,000 hits, topping out at 2,123, and hit just 143 career homers. To boil his career down to those statistics is doing a disservice however.

Not only was Mauer a career .306 hitter with a 124 OPS+, but he played incredible defense behind the plate. As a catcher, Mauer’s 53.0 fWAR ranks 15th all-time. He’s just over two-points behind Yadier Molina, who is seen as a surefire first ballot guy despite producing so little offensively. With Molina having just retired in 2022, he won’t be eligible for balloting until 2027, and while it may be cool for the catchers to go in together, it would be sad to see Mauer wait that long.

Back when Mauer hung up his cleats, doing so with one of the greatest moments Target Field has ever seen, baseball writer Jay Jaffe put together a piece outlining his credentials. Jaffe has long been a master of Cooperstown worthiness, and his closing statement regarding Mauer’s candidacy summed things up well. “Mauer nor Utley is a slam-dunk Hall of Famer, but both should benefit from the increasingly mainstream usage of advanced statistics in baseball coverage and from an evolving electorate that will soon include members from sabermetric sites…here’s hoping this pair will be part of Cooperstown’s Class of 2024.”

We’re still many months away from seeing how the Hall of Fame vote will shake out, and you can bet @NotMrTibbs and his tracker team will keep us updated throughout the process. What seems fairly certain to think on though, is that this weekend’s Twins Hall of Fame ceremony won’t be the last of its kind for Mauer.

Fans were given plenty of moments to smile upon throughout Mauer’s playing career, and the first of his retirement tour was in putting his jersey off limits. The Hall of Fame represents another stop, and Cooperstown after that. Maybe someday Target Field Plaza will put a statue up for him as well, and we’ll continue to see the man that was among the greatest catchers in baseball history get his due.