In defense of Mauer’s offense

By Edward Thoma
Free Press Staff Writer

May 05, 2008 12:52 am

— Seventh inning, Sunday afternoon. Twins down a run, men on second and third with two outs, Joe Mauer up. Result: Two-run single, Twins lead by one.
One at-bat. One clutch hit. One more small sample of why a common rap on Mauer is simply wrong.
An example from a reader’s e-mail early last week:
I heard (Ron Gardenhire) defend Joe M. today on the radio — great hitter, able to pull the ball if he wants, feared by pitchers in an RBI situation.
The reality? Seems almost impossible for him to hit a ball in the air to the right of center, and it is getting more pronounced. A good avg. hitter? Yes. A clutch hitter, rbi man? No.
But Mauer isn’t the problem in the Twins lineup. He’s not even a problem. If the Twins had nine guys who hit like Joe Mauer, they’d be at the top of the AL runs scored stats, not at the bottom, because they’d make far fewer outs.
Let’s start with the complaint that Mauer is not an “RBI man.” True, Mauer has a career high of 84 RBIs, which is an unimpressive figure for a No. 3 hitter in this era.
But RBI totals are a function of the lineup. Mauer doesn’t get as many RBI opportunities as you might expect, and has a strong track record of taking advantage of those he has.
Runners in scoring position:
BA OBP SLG
2007 .324 .447 .532
2006 .360 .497 .544
05-07 .339 .468 .513
Over the past three seasons, Mauer has hit better with men in scoring position than he has in other situations. The problem is that in that same time period, he has had just 357 at-bats with men in scoring position.
Justin Morneau, in contrast, had 470 such at-bats — as a reference, that’s four more than David Ortiz. Morneau’s rate of production was good, but still markedly lower than Mauer’s — .283, .372, .483. But nobody complains about Morneau’s “clutch” performance.
The difference in opportunities? Morneau hits one or two places behind Mauer, and Mauer’s on base 40 percent of the time. Mauer hits one or two places behind the likes of Nick Punto, who’s back in the dugout 70 percent of the time.
I’d prefer to see Mauer hitting second, as he was at the start of the season, but it doesn’t much matter. Whether he hits second of third, the four men hitting in front of him this year are going to come from this group of six (on-base percentages entering Sunday’s game):
Carlos Gomez (.299 ), Brendan Harris (.317), Adam Everett (.200), Punto (.311), Matt Tolbert (.340), Mike Lamb (.222). There aren’t many base runners coming out of that bunch.
Indeed, Mauer entered Saturday with 28 ABs with men in scoring position this season, and only six with at least two men on base. (Twenty-eight at-bats don’t prove much of anything, but for what it’s worth, he hit .321 in those 28 at-bats. And, of course, he boosted that Sunday.)
The Twins offense has been anemic. Blame Gomez, who is a lot more fun than he is effective. Blame Delmon Young, who has one more extra-base hit than Johan Santana. Blame Lamb and his .216 batting average and .284 slugging percentage. Blame Michael Cuddyer’s injury. Blame the three shortstops for being what we thought they were.
But don’t blame Mauer.
It’s true that Mauer isn’t the pull-hitting slugger we expect of a 6-foot-5, 230-pounder. He has the style, approach and results of a Rod Carew or Tony Gwynn. He’s historically unique.
That doesn’t make him ineffective, just different from what we’re used to.

Edward Thoma is a Free Press staff writer. He is at 344-6377 or at ethoma@ mankatofreepress.com. He also has a baseball blog.

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