alexlegge

I'd say DiMaggio's is the most improbable, but CRJ's is the most impressive. Also: Pete Rose's 4,256 hits The game is evolving away from singles and big hit totals. Most career hits since this was Jeter, who was almost 800 short of the record. Sorry, I can't count Ichiro.

Thanks for a well-written and thought-provoking article. However, I can't say I agree. As mentioned by other commenters, Prior's entire development would have been different in the Twins system. In my opinion, the best-case scenario is that we would've ended up with a Radke clone. You could make a decent argument in favor of that over Mauer only if Prior stayed healthy as long as Radke, but it only applies to the regular season. Your argument is based on the postseason, which is a complete roll of the dice. Remember that in the 2002 ALCS, Santana was lit up out of the bullpen while the only memorable Twins start was Joe Mays in Game 1. Mauer has been our best position player on four additional division series teams after Prior’s injury bug, not to mention the 2008 tiebreaker team (would Prior have even topped Nick Blackburn’s sparkling performance in that?). Let’s review the 4 division series: - 2004: This is probably the only instance where you could make a solid argument that Prior would have helped us overcome the Yankees. We would’ve had a better shot at leaving NYC up 2-0. - 2006: Santana lost Game 1. Bonser pitched extremely well in Game 2, which we only lost because of Hunter’s misplay. Prior wouldn’t have fared much better under those circumstances. Also, Mauer was incredible this season in a 3-team division race. - 2009: The team was exhausted from the play-in game and played like crap the whole series. Maybe we would have won the division more easily with Prior, but not without Mauer. - 2010: Another great season for Mauer. And even in an ideal world, we wouldn’t have had Liriano’s Game 1 start (which was sub-par but gave us a reasonable chance to win). Bottom line: No question that 2002-2003 would have been different with Prior, but how different? Probably not much, and it’s impossible to speculate beyond that. Ultimately, Cubs fans could make a much much much stronger argument in favor Mauer propelling them to the World Series in 2007-2008.