Monday, March 22, 2010

A Victory for the Little Guy

The word is out and Joe Mauer is staying with his hometown team. The Twins locked up Mauer's historic bat for the next eight seasons (2011-2018).

Personally I am glad to see the Twins finally shell out the cash for a hometown hero. Too often they have let their best players go just to ensure that their late billionaire owner Carl Pohlad could continue to line his pockets. The Twins needed Mauer to stay in Minnesota and baseball needed him to stay in Minnesota. It's a good thing to see.

5 comments:

Joe said...

Happy for the Twins.

Dennis said...

By all indications the Pohlad brothers who are now running the team are nowhere near as miserly as their father was. In fact, the team's payroll may reach $100 million this season.

Dan said...

He got a fair deal as well. If he really wanted to he could have gotten more on the open market, but how much more? I guess he could have gotten $200 million for ego purposes if he chose. Basically it's a win-win. The Twins got a hometown "discount" and Mauer got his blockbuster deal.

Dennis said...

Of course, it will be interesting to see what happens when he is 34, can no longer catch, and is making $23 million with a full no-trade.

I like the deal, and I think the Twins had to do it, I am just saying that if I were a GM I would rather pay him $26 million a year for six years than $23 million a year for 8 years.

Peter said...

Yea same here Dennis. I understand why teams don't front load contracts, but economically its just smarter to pay more for the best years and less for the decline. It would also make it easier to deal declining talent too.