{"id":7130,"date":"2010-03-28T10:30:54","date_gmt":"2010-03-28T09:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=7130"},"modified":"2010-04-02T15:32:16","modified_gmt":"2010-04-02T14:32:16","slug":"rounding-the-bases-mauer-stays-with-minnesota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=7130","title":{"rendered":"Rounding the Bases: Mauer stays with Minnesota"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6025\" title=\"MlbHlSq\" src=\"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/wp-content\/MlbHlSq.jpg\" alt=\"MlbHlSq\" width=\"201\" height=\"225\" \/>One can only imagine that there was a strong wind heading in the opposite direction. Otherwise, we would have heard the celebrations here in the UK, despite being thousands of miles away.\u00c2\u00a0 It was the news that Minnesotans dreamed of and had been praying for throughout the offseason: their home town, All American hero will remain a Twin for years to come.<\/p>\n<p>And it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just Twins fans who were gladdened by Joe Mauer signing his <a href=\"http:\/\/minnesota.twins.mlb.com\/news\/article.jsp?ymd=20100322&amp;content_id=8876954&amp;vkey=news_min&amp;fext=.jsp&amp;c_id=min\" target=\"_blank\">eight-year\/$184m contract extension<\/a> on Monday.\u00c2\u00a0 His future came to represent the latest seemingly hopeless battle against the might of the mighty.\u00c2\u00a0 Be it Tesco driving local shops out of business or media conglomerates buying up their competitors, now more than ever there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a depressing inevitability about the rich getting richer.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As talks over a possible contract extension fell silent, publicly at least, nervous tension began to build.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite the belief that Mauer wanted to stay in Minnesota and the apparent loosening of the purse strings by the Twins this offseason, the thought that it would end with General Manager Bill Smith emotionally stating \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwe did the best we could, but a deal wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t possible\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 always remained.\u00c2\u00a0 The Yankees and Red Sox waited in the wings, vultures with no thought for the romantics, ready to add yet another star to their collection.\u00c2\u00a0 The cries of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsay it aint so, Joe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 would have been more heartfelt than ever before.<\/p>\n<p>But no, not this time.\u00c2\u00a0 For once, the romantics won.\u00c2\u00a0 <!--more--><\/p>\n<div style=\"float:left;margin-right:5px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/view.picapp.com\/default.aspx?term=joe mauer&amp;iid=4951160\" target=\"_blank\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.picapp.com\/ftp\/Images\/e\/f\/4\/1\/Minnesota_Twins_vs_2cd7.JPG?adImageId=11768684&amp;imageId=4951160\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Minnesota Twins vs Seattle Mariners in Seattle\" width=\"234\" height=\"248\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"http:\/\/cdn.pis.picapp.com\/IamProd\/PicAppPIS\/JavaScript\/PisV4.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script>Can we claim it as a victory for the little guy, though?\u00c2\u00a0 For all the emotion and sentiment, it does come down to cold hard cash in the end.\u00c2\u00a0 Mauer is an exceptional player and deserves to be rewarded as such; if the Twins couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t afford to pay him then he wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have been wrong for heading to someone who could.\u00c2\u00a0 The deal was greatly helped by Mauer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s genuine willingness to stay and not to seek the absolute top dollar possible by becoming a free agent at the end of the 2010 season, but ultimately what made the difference was that the Twins, the so-called small-market Twins don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forget, found $184m to make it happen.<\/p>\n<p>Over the offseason, the leading player agent Scott Boras scoffed at the description of teams being small or mid-market.\u00c2\u00a0 In his eyes, all MLB teams receive enough shared revenue to compete for free agents and to retain their own players.\u00c2\u00a0 What stops them is not a lack of money, but a lack of desire to spend it.\u00c2\u00a0 Boras made these comments while trying to coerce the St Louis Cardinals into re-signing Matt Holliday.\u00c2\u00a0 He has a strong vested interest in making people believe that teams can afford players if they really want to, piling the pressure back on the clubs who would much prefer fans to lower their expectations and to accept that they cannot compete.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s therefore natural to treat his comments with suspicion, but maybe the Mauer extension shows that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more truth to them than some clubs would like us to believe?<\/p>\n<p>The Twins have raised their payroll this year, a drastic shift in organizational policy that has coincided with the move to a brand new ballpark.\u00c2\u00a0 Bud Selig\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tenure as the MLB Commissioner has produced much change, but one of the most notable is the proliferation of new stadiums that have sprung from the ground.\u00c2\u00a0 Since 1992 (when Selig became the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcacting commissioner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, he officially took the post on a permanent basis in 1998) , twenty teams have built new ballparks and this increases to 24 if you look back to 1987. Of the remaining six ballparks (Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Dodger Stadium, Angel Stadium of Anaheim, Oakland Coliseum, Kauffman Stadium), all but the A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s have extensively renovated their homes in recent years and their future in Oakland is currently under doubt.<\/p>\n<p>The building of new ballparks has been a controversial topic as the projects have involved the use of significant amounts of public funding.\u00c2\u00a0 Teams have often threatened to leave town if the money wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forthcoming, effectively holding the locals to ransom.\u00c2\u00a0 The Twins were a prime example of this, even putting themselves up to be taken out of existence as MLB considered slimming down to 28 teams.\u00c2\u00a0 The argument is always that the team will be unable to compete unless they get a new ballpark through which they can greatly increase their revenue.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a persuasive argument, but it comes with one significant condition: once the team gets their new home, the excuses run out.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Florida Marlins have taken a brutal line to cost-cutting since their 2003 World Series triumph, trading away anyone of worth and lowering their payroll to such a level that Selig and the Players Association took the unprecedented step over the recent offseason of forcing them to make a public commitment to increase their spending .\u00c2\u00a0 The Marlins\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 spendthrift approach has always been tied publicly by the club to their efforts to secure a new ballpark in Florida, which was finally approved in early 2008 (although legal wranglings are still ongoing).\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Even with low crowds in their current stadium, Florida has struggled to justify spending so little (their opening day payroll last year <a href=\"http:\/\/mlbcontracts.blogspot.com\/2005_01_19_mlbcontracts_archive.html\" target=\"_blank\">was $36,384m<\/a>) in comparison to most of their rivals.\u00c2\u00a0 If the opening of their new ballpark in 2012 isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matched by a significant increase in expenditure, fans and agents will be asking some tough questions.<\/p>\n<p>The effects of revenue sharing and a new ballpark still don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take away the shock of the Minnesota Twins committing themselves to the fourth largest contract in MLB history.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no doubt that Joe Mauer is a special case.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an outstanding player, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a native of St. Paul and is idolised in Minnesota as much for his modest and down-to-earth nature as his on-the-field achievements.\u00c2\u00a0 In short, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s everything that a fan dreams of for their team; the Twins simply could not let him go because he <em>is<\/em> the Twins.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a very rare situation.\u00c2\u00a0 Other teams would have some justification in claiming that you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t draw direct comparisons with their cases, such as the Brewers and Prince Fielder or the Phillies and Ryan Howard, both set to be free agents at the end of the 2011 season.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the thought will always be there in the minds of fans: if the Twins can do it, why can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we?<\/p>\n<p>The key question is whether the Twins really <em>could<\/em> afford to do it?\u00c2\u00a0 No fan wants to see their hero leave, but their main focus is on the team being competitive, winning games and hopefully a World Series or two.\u00c2\u00a0 The task for the Twins now is to continue to put together a competitive team with the money they have left over and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not going to be easy as Mauer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s <a href=\"http:\/\/mlbcontracts.blogspot.com\/2005\/01\/minnesota-twins_17.html\" target=\"_blank\">annual $23m salary<\/a> will amount to a fair percentage of their overall payroll.\u00c2\u00a0 Some of the other small to mid-market teams may secretly be hoping that the Twins cannot make it work, but Minnesota have proved to be very adept at working with a limited budget in the past.<\/p>\n<p>All they need now to complete the fairytale is to christen their new ballpark with a World Series and with Mauer in the mix, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a chance at doing just that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was the news that Minnesotans dreamed of and had been praying for throughout the offseason: their home town, All American hero will remain a Twin for years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[186,110,553],"class_list":["post-7130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-joe-mauer","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7130"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7207,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7130\/revisions\/7207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}