Palodios

The thing is, not only is he the best offensive catcher out there, he's also a substantial upgrade at catcher OVER ANY CATCHER in just about ALL categories. Mauer's stats versus the second and third best catchers' stats in the MLB for 2009. BA .365 v .303 v .300 OBP .444 v .381 v .366 OPS 1.031 v .885 v .861 RBI 96 v 108 v 94 (he loses out to Vmart here) Runs 94 v 88 v 74 HR 28 v 23 v 23 Were Mauer a 1st baseman, a 15-20 million contract would be reasonable, but the reason why his value is so much higher is because the lack of good catchers. At the same time, this means that trading for him would be much more expensive for prospects-- he'll definitely command Buch+Ells+ prospects, but if they sign him long term it would be more than worth it. On a side note, VMart was in 2nd or 3rd of just about all those categories, I'm really surprised how little attention he gets that he was in the top 3 of the position.

They can afford both, but the question is, do they want to. Mauer has 3 batting titles and saw a huge increase in his power numbers last year (28 home runs... 15 more than his previous best season). And he's only 26! And he's a catcher! There aren't a whole lot of models to compare contracts to, but let's use Arod. Arod got his massive contract once in his early 30s. 27 million a year for ten years. Obviously Mauer doesn't have the HR/RBI numbers, but considering that he is younger, has an incredible batting average and plays the position with the weakest field of players, do you see him getting any less than 25 for 7-8 years? 25 million is a lot of money when minesota's payroll right now is 67. Plus the contract of Morneau and Joe Nathan? I don't see it being good for a team to have that much of its resources focused on three players. However, I do see your point. Selling off either of your top two players when opening a new stadium could be a disastrous move.

I keep looking at the rumors going around today, and I'm really not liking where the adrian gonzalez situation is going. Let's consider the facts. He's an all-star player on a low budget team, making roughly 11 million dollars in the next two years. Sure that's a bit chunk of their budget, but at the same time big stars are profitable and sell tickets. Jed Hoyer knows the Sox farm system, and we can't pawn off average prospects on him like lowrie, bowden, etc. By the sound of it, they want Buch and Ellsbury, which weakens the rotation and leaves us looking at another hole in the outfield. Trading Ellsbury isn't the answer. San Diego has no reason to trade A-gon unless we overpay- he's worth every penny there for the amount of fans he puts into the seats. So I say, we need to move on, look at other options. Because of Youkilis and VMart, the team is very flexible, and can find a big bat in either 1st base, 3rd base.... and catcher. I'm just throwing some uninformed babble out there, but I want to talk about the twins. They have two incredible bats in Mauer and Morneau, and while who wouldn't want to keep them, let's look at the money. Between those two players, they are making 1/3 of the team's salary. That's a ton of money. Morneau has a few years left on his contract, although how is he any less viable than Miguel Cabrera? Mauer however, is the big deal. He's putting up hall of fame numbers every year. The twins have only one year left on him, and its unlikely that they'll be able to give him the ARod-sized contract that he's clearly worth. Unless they have an incredible season and think they'll need him for the playoffs, odds are that he will be traded by the deadline. What about talking with the angels? They're coming off some tough loses with Lackey and Figgens gone, maybe if they start thinking "rebuilding year" they might be willing to trade some players for mid-level sox prospects in part of a 3 team deal. My point is, Theo isn't going to trade CK, CB, JE, or any ridiculous package for A-gon, and we need to stop listening to the silly rumors going around. There are quite a few great players out there.What other alternatives are there?