Good For Mauer, Good For Twins, Good For Baseball

The irreplaceable Rob Neyer weighs in on the Joe Mauer extension. Your chronicler, meanwhile, received a rather aghast e-mail, a couple of days ago, from a longtime friend (and one-time colleague on a since-defunct sports opinion website), in which she asked if not demanded to know, "How do they expect the fans to come to the game when the catcher is being paid that much per year? There ... is no athlete worth that much to any team in any sport."

Some shock is understandable. The Twins' historical reputation for spending on their players compares to that of Jack Benny — the radio and television character, that is. (The actual man was actually as generous they came.) That reputation traces back to somewhere between the Johnson and Nixon Administrations. My reply to my friend, which I share here in slightly modified form, launched more or less from the standpoint of asking who says a catcher is unthinkable or untenable as a franchise player?

I can name you quite a few who could have been and may have been regarded as such. They only begin with Mickey Cochrane and Bill Dickey, who might have been thought that way if not for some other fellows on their teams. (Fellows named, among others, Al Simmons, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Hank Greenberg, Charlie Gehringer, and Joe DiMaggio.) Yogi Berra came into his own as Joe DiMaggio began his decline, and there were those who thought Yogi was the real heart of the Casey Stengel Yankees, even with the advent of Mickey Mantle. (And Mantle needed almost a decade's worth of maturity — as a player, anyway — to be thought of as the Yankee franchise.)

Roy Campanella might have been the soul of the Boys of Summer Dodgers in general perception if there wasn't a guy named Jackie Robinson on his team. On the other hand, Campanella is one of only two catchers in major league history to win three Most Valuable Player awards. (Who's the other? Hint: he squared off against Campanella in five World Series between 1949 and 1956, and he won two of his MVPs in seasons [1951, 1955] in which Campy took home the National League's prize.) Nobody questions Jackie Robinson's significance or his real greatness (he certainly would have been a Hall of Famer even if he'd been white), but do you realize or remember that Robinson won only one MVP to Campanella's three?

Johnny Bench was probably the real soul of the Big Red Machine, even if Pete Rose was its indelible image. Gary Carter — who might have been regarded in Bench's league, or at least as his heir apparent in the National League, if he'd had the blessing Bench had of so many incandescent teammates — was the soul of his generation of Montreal Expos. (Carter did have a couple of glittering teammates: Andre Dawson and Tim Raines.) Mike Piazza probably was the soul of the early-to-mid-1990s Dodgers; he was no questions asked the soul of the late-'90s/early-to-mid-2000s Mets.

There were those who questioned Joe Mauer's actual MVP qualification in 2009. I was one of them, I admit it. There was no question that his counting stats were overwhelming for his position. But his qualitative stats — I damn well do remember he wasn't the most run-productive Twin in the clutch down that thriller of a stretch while the Tigers were imploding slowly (Michael Cuddyer may have been the best clutch run producer on the club down that final stretch) — were just a little lacking, though not necessarily by much.

Right now, with or without the MVP case, Joe Mauer is the best all-around player on the Twins and may be one of the 10 best all-around players in the American League. Right now. Clearly enough is he the face of the Twins, its most popular player, which ought to scuttle any worries about whether fans are going to come to the games. As if the Twins' fans were going to keep coming if the team let Mauer walk after the 2010 season, with a few other teams not limited to the Yankees keeping a very close watch on his entrails.

And catchers are far more imperative to their teams than they're still credited with being. They used to call catching equipment "the tools of ignorance," a term that may have applied more to fans who didn't get it than to the job itself. Catchers basically have equal shares in the first and primary control of a game and sometimes superior shares.

There are reasons why Yogi Berra should be considered just ahead of Johnny Bench as the greatest catcher ever to strap it on. Bench has the image as the quintessential defensive catcher mostly because he's credited with "inventing" two techniques, the sweep tag and the one-handed catching style. Let's dispense with those right away: he may have perfected the techniques, but he didn't invent them. The sweep tag was a Negro Leagues staple long before Johnny Bench was old enough to be thought a major league prospect. And he wasn't the first major league catcher to go one-handed: Randy Hundley beat him to the league by a couple of seasons.

But Berra didn't have to be an actual or alleged pioneer. The reasons he should be considered ahead of Bench only begin with leading his league in defensive putouts (eight times), assists (five times), and double plays (six times) more often than Bench. (In order: twice, once, and once, believe it or not.) They only continue with Yogi's superior ability to stay out of the double play (146 lifetime groundings into double plays; Bench: 201), avoid the strikeout (by a whopping margin: he had 864 fewer lifetime strikeouts), produce runs (Berra: 1,430 RBI/1,174 runs; Bench: 1,376 RBI/1,091 runs), and reach base in the first place. (Berra, OBP: .348; Bench, OBP: .342 — I didn't think they were that closely matched, either.) Did I mention that Bench played only 38 more games lifetime than Berra?

Before you point to Yankee Stadium's yumminess for lefthanded hitting, by the way, inform or remind yourself that Yogi was the quintessential bad-ball hitter who usually hit the bad balls the other way at least as often as he hit them up the middle or managed to pull them; and Bench was damn good at going up the middle or the other way and wasn't a lockstep pull hitter.

But there is one more reason to put Berra ahead of Bench and everyone else, a reason few beyond a handful of statheads might suspect. This may shock you unless you have read Allen Barra's analysis. ("The Greatest Team Sports Player," from Brushbacks and Knockdowns: The Greatest Baseball Debates of Two Centuries). It finally convinced me, once and for all, about Berra behind the plate. No catcher in baseball history, before, in, or after his time, had a more positive impact on his pitching staffs than Yogi Berra had. One man aside (and we will return to him shortly), every Yankee pitcher who threw to Berra had better statistics when Yogi was behind the plate than he had when any other catcher, on the Yankees or elsewhere, was behind the plate.

That covers names you might remember: Allie Reynolds, Eddie Lopat, Vic Raschi, Tommy Byrne, Bob Turley, Don Larsen, Bob Grim, Ryne Duren, Art Ditmar, Bobby Shantz. That also covers names you might not remember, if you heard of them at all; or, at least, names you probably don't recall as having been Yankee names for any appreciable time: Jim Konstanty, Johnny Kucks, Tom Sturdivant, Tom Morgan, Harry Byrds, Duke Maas, Zach Monroe, and Jim McDonald. (Some extremely attentive Yankee fans might throw in the name Jim Coates, but lo! Coates's three best seasons, 1959-61, showed him with a 30-9 won-lost record, mostly in relief, but a 3.53 ERA, all at a time when Elston Howard was emerging to succeed Berra as the Yankees' regular catcher.)

Berra caught only one bona-fide Hall of Famer in his entire tenure as the Yankees' regular catcher. If you take that man's word for it it was Yogi who most made him the pitcher he became:

Everyone regarded me as a cocky kid when I came up, and that's the way they continued to see me throughout my career. I acted that way 'cause I figured it gave me an edge. I didn't throw as fast as some guys and I didn't have as big a curve as some, but I acted as if I was confident, and that's the way people regarded me, especially the hitters, the ones I really wanted to impress. Well, I wasn't confident, not really. It was Yogi who was confident, and Yogi that made me feel that way. With anyone else as my catcher, I wouldn't have been the same pitcher. — Whitey Ford

What about Ford's only two seasons winning 20 games or more, when Yogi's successor Elston Howard was his regular catcher? Well, only once in his career did Ford lead his league in walks/hits per inning pitched average ... when Yogi was his regular catcher. How about his earned run average? With Elston Howard as his regular catcher (1961-66): 2.78. With Yogi Berra (1950, 1953-60) as his regular catcher? 2.71. (Incidentally, Ford led his league in ERA twice in his career, in 1956 and 1958. Got the picture?)

Okay, so maybe there's a bare hair's breadth between Berra and Howard in terms of his ERA. How about that vaunted winning percentage? (Keep in mind, too, the legend of Casey Stengel holding Ford out for the actual or alleged "big games" for all those seasons, seasons in which Ford won 18 or better only thrice and never won more than 19.)

Based on a criteria of a thousand minimum innings pitched and a hundred minimum decisions, Ford is first among Hall of Famers and fourth on the all-time list. The top 25 include only four who became Hall of Famers as pitchers alone. (Babe Ruth is 11th on the all-time list, but you know damn well he isn't in Cooperstown on his arm.) In ascending order, they are: Sandy Koufax, Christy Mathewson, Lefty Grove, and the Chairman of the Board. Which of Whitey's two regular catchers did the most to help him get there? Are you ready?

With Elston Howard as his regular catcher: .649

With Yogi Berra as his regular catcher: .704

You would expect a Hall of Famer to look good enough when a fellow Hall of Famer is throwing to him, but when a Hall of Famer's winning percentage is 55 points higher than when he's throwing to a not-quite Hall of Famer, that's a striking distinction. But do you really expect the rest of the pitchers coming through the organization to show the anomalies all those other Yankee pitchers show between Yogi Berra as their catcher and anyone else — on the Yankees or elsewhere — as their catcher?

Johnny Bench was a good game caller. But the pitchers who threw to him didn't have measurably superior statistics to when they threw to other Reds catchers. This isn't Bench's fault entirely: the Reds had a strange proclivity toward developing pitchers who came down, almost invariably, with arm or shoulder trouble. Most of those pitchers weren't quite as top of the line as their repertoires or their notices had them.

What about pitchers whom the Reds didn't develop but rather acquired? Pretty much the same story. Even Hall of Famer Tom Seaver had statistics when Bench was his catcher that were comparable to or a little less than what he had when he threw to other catchers in all those prime seasons with the Mets. When Seaver first became a Red (ask any Met fan about the Midnight Massacre of 1977), he finished a 21-6/2.53 ERA season overall by going 14-3/2.34 the rest of the way for the Reds. He had a slightly better total winning percentage as a Red than as a Met, which you can probably attribute at least as much to the Reds being a superior team while the Mets hit a ferocious downslide. (And he did pitch the only no-hitter of his career as a Red.) But his ERA as a Red was 61 points higher than his ERA as a Met.

Thus far, Joe Mauer's pitchers seem to show a little better statistical performance when they throw to him than when they throw to any other catcher. He isn't in Yogi Berra's dimension as a game commander quite yet; the statistical differences for Mauer's pitchers aren't anywhere near the differences for Berra's. But if you watch the complete game of the man you should have the idea that Mauer isn't earning his paychecks merely by using the outfield or the bleachers as his personal batting range. Barely into his prime, he could prove himself well enough the best catcher in the game. Right here, right now, he's the best catcher in the American League with Jorge Posada on the downslope, Jason Varitek waiting to meet him at the bottom, and Victor Martinez just behind Mauer.

But the emphasis is here and now. Last season was Mauer's coming-out party, at the plate especially; he never hit anywhere close to his 2009 levels in his five seasons prior. He may be a three-time batting champion (itself rather anomalous for a catcher), but keep in mind that batting average is one of the least indicative of counting stats. Mauer had always flashed plenty of potential as a run producer, but in 2009 he finally turned it into reality.

Time alone will tell whether 2009 was playing over his own head or pointing toward his true future, but 2009 is what landed him that fat contract extension. If the Twins were smart it was going to happen one way or another, with or without the Denard Span deal. The Span deal wasn't going to spur a Mauer deal in monetary terms; the Twins locked Span down for a song. Maybe even a short medley. (Span won't see his first million-dollar annual salary until year two of the deal, and if he just plays at his 2008-2009 level for the life of the deal, it's going to be considered one of the great bargain buys of this era.)

Locking Span down for five years probably meant the Twins were somewhere close enough to do-or-die mode to lock Mauer down to a multiyear deal and not even think of risking his departure as a free agent after the season about to begin. Span isn't exactly unproven; his first two major league seasons compare very favorably to those of his Boston Red Sox counterpart, Jacoby Ellsbury. He may not be anywhere within a county line or two of Joe Mauer's money for a good while, but the Twins had to be thinking they couldn't sign a now-hot center fielder and leadoff man to a multiyear deal without a thought about securing a well-proven catcher and run producer, even if you think Mauer played a little over his own head in 2009.

Any other thought and it might have backfired enough to see Mauer in another uniform (not necessarily Yankee pinstripes, either) and the Twins' leadership fitted for a necktie party. That is how valuable Mauer is to the Twins and how popular he is in Minnesota. These are not your father's Twins; they would have shown Mauer the money no matter what. Nobody ever went broke embracing the idea that, when you get that rare a hometown/homestate jewel, you mine it, shine it, and display it properly enough.

It's the kind of all-around commitment this deal, by this team, for this player, shows. That's good for Joe Mauer. That's better for the Twins. And — unless you think the rest of the game's actual or alleged have-nots are laughing it off, having been just been shown up as fools by one of the game's long reputed have-or-will-nots — that's great for baseball.