Joe Mauer Topic Page

Joe Mauer didn't embarrass himself Sunday night in the home run derby, but he didn't have enough to advance into the 2nd round. He ended up bopping 5 homers in the first round, which landed him in a swing-off with Carlos Pena and Albert Pujols to advance to the 2nd round. Pujols advanced, but Mauer proved he can keep up with the more notable long ball hitters in baseball.

With more notorious home run hitters like Justin Morneau, Mark Teixeira and Josh Hamilton declining their invitations to participate in this year's home run derby, the door has opened for Joe Mauer to participate in his first derby.

Mauer has certainly shown an increase in power, already amassing a career-high 15 home runs on the season, but throughout his 5+ year career he's been more of a single & double hitter. A common thought has always been that Mauer could hit more home runs if he chose to sacrifice some average and on-base percentage. He'll now get a chance to prove that.

Joe Mauer hit 11 home runs, batted .414 and had an on-base percentage of .500 for the month of May, which is nothing short of amazing. In his first game of the month of June, he managed to step it up a notch.

Mauer was 3-for-3 with a walk and hit his 12th home run of the season. He's now just 1 shy of his career high of 13 home runs in 2006. What's interesting is that all 3 of his hits came against left-handed pitching, which helps close the large gap in his platoon splits. Coming into the game Mauer was hitting .493 against RHP and .250 against LHP. The 3 hits bring the LHP average to .314.

Anticipoinment has to be the official word of the Twins-Royals weekend series. The series brought much anticipation for the return of Joe Mauer, and let me be clear, Mauer had nothing to with the latter half of the portmanteau. In his first at-bat on Friday night, he took 2 pitches for balls before hitting an opposite field solo home run. Mauer also had a double and a walk, and with the help of a 3 RBI night from Justin Morneau the Twins won the first game of the series, and all was right in the world again.

Joe Mauer is now officially on the active roster, which of course was expected today. Juan Morillo, who had a horrible relief outing surrounded by a couple OK appearances since being claimed off waivers a couple weeks ago, was outrighted to AAA Rochester to make room for Mauer.

The Twins enter the series at Cleveland with a 7-9 record, which puts them just 1.5 games behind Chicago, Detroit and Kansas City for the division lead. Cleveland is just a game behind the Twins. The Twins are fortunate to have the record they have, considering they've played much worse than that in terms of runs scored (66) vs. runs allowed (97).

The pitching matchups for the weekend:

Friday: Nick Blackburn, RHP (0-1, 5.71) vs. __Fausto Carmona, RPH (1-2, 7.88) Saturday: Kevin Slowey, RHP (2-0, 5.89) vs. Carl Pavano, RHP (0-2, 9.69) Sunday: Glen Perkins, LHP (1-1, 1.50) vs. Aaron Laffey, LHP (1-0, 2.19)

Much to my surprise, Joe Mauer, took the lead in All-Star balloting for AL Catchers in today's weekly update of the vote totals. He's narrowly edging out Boston's Jason Varitek. It's not the Mauer doesn't deserve to be the starting catcher in the mid-summer classic--he certainly does. It's just that past years have taught us that big market teams (and older veteran players) have a significant advantage in the fan-based voting.

I've done projections for all the pitchers, now it's time to get to the hitters before the season begins. We start with the catcher, Joe Mauer. As with pitchers, let's start by taking a look at the ZiPS projection for 2008 as well as his past two seasons.

This is part 1 of a series of pieces over the next couple weeks that will take a position-by-position look at the Twins over the past five seasons. You'll see how the team has changed, where they went right and where they went wrong in personnel decisions.

The Twins picked up 10 hits in the Tuesday's game, but 7 of them came from two batters—Mauer and Kubel. Let's start out with the postitives. In the 5th inning the Twins scored their first run. Jason Kubel singled and Joe Mauer doubled to drive him in. That was the only run until the 8th when Jason Kubel hit a solo homer.