I have no idea how these guys are taxed, but I would certainly hope that’s not a consideration!

frightwig, you make legitimate points, but I’m just not buying the “plays as many games as you’d expect of a catcher” thing (and I hope we can agree that “gold gloves” is the last criteria we should refer to when assessing defensive abilities). Sure he does catch a lot of games when he’s healthy. But he’s not just a catcher. He is (or at least is supposed to be) the lynchpin of the offense. He’s also the face of the franchise and to earn that $23 million, he’s got to be in the line up more than 135 times a year.

All 3 of you made references to the organization (whether Gardy, Smith or whomever) not insisting on more from him in one manner or another and I totally agree. None of us is on the “inside”, so we don’t really know whether there is any sort of clubhouse resentment toward Mauer, but there are certainly signs of it being reported. If it’s true, then the Twins have only themselves to blame. They created this prima donna and now they have to live with the results. If he’s hitting .380, there’s no problem. If he’s hitting .190 and still getting special treatment, then yeah… that could be a big problem.

I lost whatever remaining respect I had for his character when he declined to go to Rochester. I’m sure he didn’t “refuse” to go to Rochester because I’m pretty sure Bill Smith would not put him in a position where it would be an outright refusal. But Gardenhire had made it pretty clear in the media that he thought Mauer should spend time with the Red Wings. The fact that he didn’t do so reflects badly on both Mauer and on Bill Smith who apparently didn’t have the guts to assign him there.

It is incredibly discouraging to me because it is a blatant demonstration that Mauer will never put the interests of the team above his own narrow interests.

He disappears in the playoffs, he puts his own interests ahead of the team, and don’t kid yourself, he was backed into a corner about working out at first (my bet is that some of his commercial and endorsement sponsors aren’t too happy about the beating his image is taking) — he is simply not a leader that will ever lead the Twins into playoff success.

I’d guess that he probably was advised that the surgery would be a minor fix-up, and he’d be good to go by April, so he acted accordingly. Perhaps he made his leg even worse by trying to start the season with the team, although he wasn’t really ready to go. So he might be guilty of bad judgment, or taking bad advice from doctors. I’d also agree that it might have helped him to spend a week in Rochester, although he’s used Ft. Myers as his tune-up spot before and it worked out fine.

But I don’t get all the stuff about him being soft, inconsistent, and selfish. It’s true that he has some significant injury every couple-few years, but he’s not sitting out over piddly aches and pains, and he still usually plays as many games as you’d expect of a Catcher by the end of the season. And given that he’s been consistently winning Gold Gloves & Silver Slugger awards at Catcher, I can’t call him selfish because he hasn’t asked to learn other positions before today, or since he hasn’t asked the manager to drop him in the order because he’s just 6-for-34 in the 10 games since coming off the DL.

The grounders he was taking at 1B today, I take as a sign that Gardy has talked to him about giving him a secondary position where he might occasionally “take it easy” but still keep his bat in the lineup, where Luke Hughes might sit down instead of displacing Jim Thome. Maybe Gardy didn’t need him to do that when he had Morneau or Cuddyer available to play there, but Luke Hughes? The situation is desperate. And credit to Mauer for answering the call of duty and saying, ‘OK, if it helps the team for me to play 1B occasionally, now, instead of DH’ing, I’ll give it a try.’