It turns out that Joe Mauer isn't doing too poorly in WPA compared to the other #3 hitters in the AL. There are a lot of guys struggling a lot worse. Here each team, who has batter #3 for them the most, and their WPA through 4/27:

 

TBR - Longoria 1.01

TEX - Hamilton 1.01

DET - Cabrera 0.86

CHW - Dunn 0.42

BAL - Markakis 0.41

MIN - Mauer 0.28

CLE - Choo 0.03

BOS - Gonzalez -0.01

OAK - Reddick -0.16

TOR - Bautista -0.18

KCR - Hosmer -0.29

LAA - Pujols -0.3

SEA - Ichiro -0.52

NYY - Cano -0.53

Looking at the bottom half of this list, I find it hard to believe those names will stay down there for long.

Hypothetically, if the Twins had the top 3 guys on that list (Longoria, Hamilton, and Cabrera) along with Mauer, which one would bat 3rd?

Hypothetically, if the Twins had the top 3 guys on that list (Longoria, Hamilton, and Cabrera) along with Mauer, which one would bat 3rd?

Span, Mauer, Cabrera, Hamilton, Longoria. That would be a really fun 1-5.

Span, Mauer, Cabrera, Hamilton, Longoria. That would be a really fun 1-5.

That would be fun, but Gardy is still the manager. So Carroll is probably still batting 2nd.

I'll bet money Pujols doesn't stay down there on the list....lots of money. I'd guess most of those don't.....

Since the entire post was premised upon the value of WPA as a statistic, I referred to this FanGraphs explanation and had myself a good laugh:

 

Why you should care: WPA takes into account the importance of each situation in the game. A walk off home run is going to be weighted more then a home run in a game that has already gotten out of hand. This makes it a great tool for determining how valuable a player was to his team’s win total.

 

Something tells me the sabermetrics community's uncompromising love for Joe Mauer is not a product of all of the "walk-off homers" he hits...or the ones he hits in blow-out games! I readily concede that Joe Mauer is awesome at "trying not to get out".

 

So, if that list based on 20-odd games is to be trusted, Nick Markakis is better than Mauer, Puljos, Adrian Gonzalez, Hosmer, Bautista, and Cano. Got it.

 

I don't think Mauer is a "bad" #3 hitter, I just think that one thing that is very difficult to measure with any kind of statistic is mentality at the plate. Morneau in his prime was an example of a guy who could mash for the fences (and maybe strike out), or prolong the inning with a base hit when we were down by multiple runs. Mauer's approach, almost always, is to prolong innings so that other guys get a chance to drive him in. That doesn't make him bad, but ideally he'd be a great #2 hitter if we had better options at #3. Actually, a healthy Morneau, in many ways, would be a great #3 hitter.

How about changing the title to Mauer VS other #2 hitters.