StormJH1

I have to agree with you. It's really not my place to judge Trevor Bauer as a human being. I know that sexual assault cases are very complicated, and that the District Attorney's office in this case did not find sufficient evidence to sustain charges against him. But the physical harm he caused isn't even disputed, and it's disgusting. "Lack of criminal liability" is also not the only standard I apply as a fan asking if I want my team to go acquire a specific pitcher for a lucrative sum of money. The alleged behavior was quite different, but I pretty much ceased being a fan of Miguel Sano after the attempted sexual assault he was accused of, and my mind was not changed by the fact that MLB determined it lacked evidence to suspend him over it. The Twins front office does not want this. There are knock-on consequences to a move like this, but you don't know what they are in advance. Fans who would consider signing Bauer are only evaluating his past rap sheet - and there's quite a bit there to worry about. What about the next time an encounter with a female goes wrong? What about the effect on an already half-empty stadium, and a portion of the fanbase who feel so strongly on this one issue that they have a fresh new reason to be done with this team? What about a front office placed under constant pressure to defend this move in perpetuity. The Brandon Taubman/Astros/Roberto Osuna episode is a notable example of how ugly this can get. No thanks. There has be some other route to getting to 81+ wins in a weak division than asking for all of these problems over this one guy.

I don't know if Arraez has the star power to command an "ace" in a trade, but I think dealing him now makes a lot more sense. They might have done it anyway out of desperation, but now you actually have the long-term middle infield depth to support that move, such that it could actually make the team better, as opposed to shuffling pieces around to give off the appearance of doing something. I agree with, like, 98% of your post - particularly the part about waiting for the final product. (Case in point, 2021-22 offseason). However, it's not like this outcome was orchestrated by the front office - Correa opted out of a contract (with the Twins), and then was signed by two other teams that significantly outbid us. Those teams then had to essentially back out of those plans, at significant PR costs with their fanbases. So, either they're right to bail on a long-term deal and we'll find out shortly, or they're wrong and the Twins are insanely lucky. Maybe both? As I said before, I still favor the move given the reduced amount and the shorter terms. The vesting years are nice, but I'm pretty doubtful those are going to ever be desirable with a mid-30's (former?) shortstop who appears likely to have chronic injury issues sometime in the future.

This whole saga also makes me wonder if Correa (and Boras) underestimated the risk of playing out last season. He's "backing into" $200 million with a deal covering only half the duration of his Giants deal. You're telling me there wasn't a $200 million out there for him anywhere in 2021-22!? Was COVID that big of an impact on MLB economics to risk this? Corey Seager got $325 million. Marcus Semien and Javier Baez got well over $100 million and neither is anywhere near as good as Correa.

Something isn't adding up here. One thing missing from the reporting is that Correa should have just went through this process in the 2021-22 offseason. Presumably, he passed a physical with the Twins on the 3-year deal late that offseason, correct? And his 2014 broken ankle was well-known throughout his career, but never caused problems until this 2022-23 offseason. So...why the change? It could be that the sensitivity to long-term injury issues on a 12-year deal for HUGE money is significantly greater than on a 3-year deal, or even this 6-year proposed deal. But another possibility is that there are new findings in the ankle - something that even the Twins were not aware of after that scare in September when he slid into 2nd. Or that a fresh scan has showed issues with the hardware in his ankle (loose screws, etc.), either from that incident, or just due to the progression of time. I just don't feel like his ankle hardware was a big, unknown secret. This feels to me like there is something observably going on with the ankle, even if it has yet to cause a DL stint in his entire career. To have two teams back out of deals like this only after the physical is really quite extreme. I do want to add that I'm generally thrilled about the contract and about retaining the player, and you could argue that the Twins just go with it for 6 years almost no matter what the issue is.

This is a tough one for me. The idea of hating on anyone because of a sexual preference, or telling them basically "God doesn't love you" because of some attribute a person arguably can't control is very offensive to me, and to a LOT of other people. But for whatever reason, I don't have the personal dislike for Torii that I had for, say, Matt Birk, who expressed basically the same views but also did so in the climate of a Minnesota marriage amendment debate. Birk's response felt more cold and premeditated, and he made more of an effort to evangelize people with op-ed pieces, etc. Maybe that's why I have differing opinions of what is largely the same "offense". Torii, by contrast, just likes to talk and he has a big mouth. I can relate that at times. He is also human and he holds some views from his upbringing that are distasteful to others. Okay. I wish he didn't feel that way, but so long as the worst thing he does with it is respond to direct questions about his views when prompted by the media, then so be it. Birk was a Harvard grad and a guy that wanted to be viewed as important on subjects. Torii's views, even if they are the same views, I just never felt like he was trying to get everyone to agree with him. It's also worth noting that Torii is popular particularly BECAUSE he is open and jovial with the media. Joe Mauer could have horrible personal views on something, and we would never know about it. But is THAT the personality you want all athletes to have? As for Bernadino, I just don't know the point of the question he was asking. I think Mark Rosen or something said that a question like that could have been done in private, if the reporter was really worried about being able to ask him about that in the future. Once it's done in front of cameras at a signing press conference, where the mood is usually receptive and upbeat, it becomes about the reporter trying to set a discussion topic. I could see circumstances this year where a refresh on Torii's views on homosexuality may be a relevant topic, but this December press conference wasn't it.

This annoys me for reasons on a more "macro" level than just whether or not I want Kurt Suzuki back. I don't really care who our catcher is next year. Kurt Suzuki was useful this year, but his surprise all-star appearance still isn't likely to get us above 70 wins. He's not actually a good defensive catcher (though certainly a passable one), and his "veteran impact on the pitching staff" isn't translating to actual results. Trade him now for whatever halfway-decent prospect you can get, and then audition Pinto or play Eric freakin' Fryer for the rest of the season. Find the best defensive catcher you can off the waiver heap (that hits around .200) for 2015 and platoon him with Pinto. The options for catching expand quite a bit when you don't have to commit to one guy for 120 games behind the plate. This isn't fantasy baseball. Suzuki's hitting is "good for a catcher", but .304 and 2HR's with a .750-ish OPS wouldn't be that special of an outfielder, and would be a poor corner infielder. Positional scarcity only really matters if you have most or all of the impact offensive positions filled with average or above-average guys, and the Twins do not. Get value for him while he has value.

I love, love, love this trade. I don't even fully understand it. I've heard hours of Suzuki, Willingham, etc. trade speculation, and to think that a guy we got back for SAM FULD is represents more established value than anybody reasonably discussed for those guys?! Milone fits the Twins' mold, for sure. He doesn't really miss bats, but has exception control. His numbers were probably helped by playing in a great pitcher's park. But at that age and contract situation, he's a great left-handed pitching asset - basically for free. He may have an ERA in the low 4's on this team, but if the K rate returns more to the mid-6's, that would still be significantly better than several other starters on this staff.

I about to hop over on the Tommy Milone thread and blow some serious sunshine up Terry Ryan's backside for how great that move is...but on the flipside of that, can we PLEASE stop trying to re-sign guys at the absolute peak of their value? The Mauer thing was a special, extreme case, but they did this same thing with Doumit, and they try to do it with every mediocre starting pitcher as soon as they have consecutive OK starts. We don't need to lock up Kurt Suzuki long-term. The A.J. thing may have messed up some of the need for him, but it seems like he could and should be moved for decent rental value. I'm thinking C+/B- value. I hope the talk of resigning him is to somehow hike up his trade value, though I don't think that makes any sense.

"Blackie" was reference to Blackburn, which is one possible comparison. It also reminded me of Scott Erickson (the black socks): http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/e/ericksc01.shtml Erickson probably had better movement (and less control) than Gibson, but whether or not you buy any comparison, Erickson is a good example of what happens in this league when you absolutely cannot miss bats. A sub-4 ERA in 1991 and 1992, and then he leads the league in hits allowed in '93 and had to be one of the worst full-time starters that year (this predates me a bit both in age and I lived somewhere else, but you get the point). Probably the best career path Gibson could hope for is someone like Brandon McCarthy, who basically never walks anyone, but will get knocked around on occasion. At the end of the year though, his numbers usually average out to something decent. The stat they threw up in his last start about having the most extreme splits between wins and losses was interesting, because the next four guys on that list were either elite pitchers, or guys that do strike people out). Gibson's whole approach is predicated on putting the ball in play - he really never had a prolonged track record in the minors of striking guys out. We're actually fortunate to end up with a mid-rotation guy out of his injury history, but I think we're seeing about as good as he'll be.

Well said. And for all the Mauer criticism, I really don't harbor any ill will about the "retirement from catcher". I just get baffled when people in the national (and even local) scene talk about Mauer going back to catching. It will NEVER happen. They said it will never happen, and they gave a medical reason why they aren't risking it. He's 31 now and was a mediocre/inconsistent catcher at best the last two years. His bat wasn't that great this season, but part of the reason for that probably was post-concussion recovery that happened from catching. He's not catching anymore. As for the WAR question, I hate WAR with a burning passion, but understand that one of the issues of it is that it is a cumulative metric, not an average. In other words, he has to play long enough at an above replacement level to continue to add it up. At 1B, that accumulation will slow down quite a bit.

Yeah...I'm going to complete reject the statement that the Twins are the unluckiest team in baseball, or even "unlucky" compared to other teams. The only sense in which they have been unlucky is the element of luck in their draft classes from probably 2005 to 2010. But to say that their drafts failed purely out of luck requires you to say that luck is the only major factor in finding success in the draft, which I don't buy. They drafted poorly and didn't sign impact free agents for over half a decade...how is the team supposed to be successful if those two things are true? The injuries to pitching prospects like Wimmers, Gibson, etc. are hardly atypical in baseball. You can throw names like Strasburg, Harvey, and Jose Fernandez into the heap of pitchers who have needed Tommy John. The difference is that those guys were good enough in the first place that they can come back and succeed for plenty of years, even if they lost a couple of ticks off their fastball. I'm not sure what else would even classify as unlucky? Morneau wasn't unlucky, he was just injury-prone. The concussion stuff started in 2005 (or earlier), but he had a number of other physical issues (including the neck again this year). Mauer has had injury issues in 2011, 2013, and 2014, but he's just one guy. Even when he plays like "Joe Mauer", the team may be good like they were in 2010, or terrible like they were ever since. And so many of the injuries have been mismanaged, it's hard to tell where the poor management supersedes the impact of the injury itself. I do think the Twins from 2015-2018 will be better than they were the last 4 years, but luck isn't the reason why they were so bad.

Any comparison between the Yankees and Twins in terms of free agent strategy, especially before 2012, is borderline ridiculous. The Twins didn't even play the free agent game until recently. Willingham, Nolasco, Hughes, and now the rental on Morales really signal a sea change in management/ownership, even if we still aren't signing guys to $100+ million deals (which, let's face it, the majority of them end up being bad deals anyway). But I don't see those moves as "rebuilding". You have so many guys in jobs they have had for so long, I just instantly assume that people like Gardy, Ryan, etc. don't want the the bottom to completely fall out, so they add a veteran piece here or there to appease the fanbase and to keep it from being a completely rebuilt roster. And I have to catch myself because whereas in hockey or basketball that would be a terrible strategy that would get you stuck with draft picks in the teens, the MLB draft is so much more unpredictable (and until recently, was dictated as much by signability as it was by talent) that tanking doesn't really do anything for you. Sure, you can end up a Byron Buxton because your team was bad, but you could also just sign Miguel Sano or a Cuban player with no impact from the draft whatsoever. And that Buxton pick could just as easily have been Mark Appel, which isn't looking that great right now.

I'll answer this thinking more back on mid-20's Mauer than current Mauer, because people with his body type in their early 30's almost uniformly can't be all that agile/athletic. Most of the Mauer being athletic discussion came with the silent preamble "For a catcher," or "For a 6'5" guy,". Unlike the people who wanted to put him at 3B, I never felt like Mauer had the type of athleticism that demanded to get him out from behind the plate to benefit from it. In other words, Craig Biggio was a catcher but they moved him to 2B both to preserve his career and because his speed/agility was wasted behind the plate. Mauer isn't like that. He has really interesting athletic abilities - including decent top speed for a long-strider and impressive hand-eye coordination - but those may have translated in more useful ways in sports other than baseball.

Overall, I think Gardy's been fine. The team "feels" better this year because it's a more dynamic team with young, inconsistent players in the lineup who are occasionally terrific. I felt almost cornered into play the contrarian when they signed Kendrys Morales, because it felt to me like a team that just wanted to believe they were buyers as opposed to sellers or rebuilders SO badly. This despite the fact that Nolasco has been mostly a flop so far, the rotation as a whole still can't strike anyone out, and they've been buoyed by a few unlikely breakouts/hot starts (Colabello and Suzuki) come to mind. And they're last in a so-so division with a losing record, so let's keep the praise in check. Overall, I'm fine with Gardy's job performance. But I still get the sense that the team has benefits from things he didn't control directly (like Hughes being a bargain and Dozier being on a near 30-HR pace the past 365 days), and he also hasn't suffered as much as he should for some of the questionable decisions, such as the outfield defense situation. I don't think this team hits well enough to sustain Willingham in left and a combination of Arcia and various infielders (Nunez and Santana) also playing tons of outifield without the proper pedigree to do so. And people say that's a personnel thing and not a "Gardy" thing, but I totally disagree with that because Gardy's influence is very strong on his need for a 3rd catcher and preference for hording "utility" infielders at the expense of multiple guys that can defend in CF and LF.

Slow down. Phil Hughes as a Top 20 pitcher (or maybe Top 20 AL pitcher) may be a discussion. Gibson is not even close to that. Anyone who's played fantasy baseball or tracks this stuff regularly knows how this turns out. It's not that pitchers can't find success if they fail to miss bats, it's just that they are so much more prone to wild ERA swings based on luck, defense, etc. Kyle Gibson is one of the worst starters in baseball at striking guys out. If you look at the top 40 in innings pitched (as referenced above), he is THE worst, save for Jeremy Guthrie. Even in a good defensive ballpark, that will eventually come back to bite you. Someone above mentioned Mike Pelfrey. Pre-TJ Pelfrey is actually a pretty good comparison to what Gibson is doing right now. Both guys look big and throw reasonably hard, but are painfully bad at missing bats. Pelfrey would a year with an ERA in the high 3's, but it would be sandwiched with two years in the 5's. And that was in the NL. I'm not being "down" on Gibson, I'm just being realistic. You don't usually "learn" to miss more bats in the majors. I would actually be more encouraged right now if his ERA were 4.70, but his K rate were 7.5. Gibson this year isn't walking a ton of people, and only has given up 4 HR's so far. What that means for his overall results is that you're basically looking at a "best case scenario" unless he strikes more guys out. Gibson is going to give up homers, and there will be times where the hits fall in bunches.

I don't buy the post-concussion thing as an explanation. I can't "prove" that it isn't a factor because we literally understand .01% of how the brain works and what head injuries do to our reflexes and timing. But there are more clearly observable things with him going on. Mauer, even the 2006-10 version of Mauer, ALWAYS supplemented his average with groundball or low line drive hits. You could probably find hundreds of clips of 5-hopper singles skipping through the Metrodome infield up the middle. There was a thought for years that you couldn't shift Mauer because he was such a great opposite field hitter. Turns out, you CAN shift Mauer, you just do it differently. Teams started putting infielders up the middle in his bilateral leg weakness year, and that was one of the explanations for his struggles in years past. But while you can accidentally hit singles, you can't really "accidentally" hit a double. Teams are now shifting to take away the gaps in the outfield, and they can do this because Mauer cannot or will not pull a ball down the right field line. This is what Mauer is. It's not like he's striking out at ungodly rates this year (Mauer's K's have been up even in good Mauer seasons like 2012 and 2013). When his BABIP is around .320 or lower, the average goes down. In all of his years where he was successful, his BABIP was around .350 (some years significantly higher). People attribute BABIP to luck, but it's also about defense and tendencies. It's like the line from Bull Durham about 20 extra base hits being the difference from getting a call-up. My point about Mauer is and has always been that the perception of his "success" is too closely tied to variations in how often his groundballs and liners fall for hits. He forces himself into two strike counts because he prefers to be a defensive hitter. If Joe Mauer was batting .290 right now, yes it'd be better, but as a #2 or #3 hitter, you need extra base hits to consistently drive in runs. Mauer's emphasis is and has always been to avoid getting out. If he were in Melky Cabrera's spot in the Blue Jays lineup, or Matt Carpenter on STL, he'd score 100 runs or more every year doing that. On this team, with the mostly ordinary lineups behind him, he looks, well, ordinary.

This move is exactly what I hated about the Morales signing. I love seeing Morales in a (sloppy, untucked) Twins jersey, and he's a professional hitter. But it's more complicated to say whether his addition actually makes us a better TEAM. You can't say that for sure when you know Mauer/Morales have 1B and DH covered virtually every game, which means that corner outfield is occupied by two out of the following: Willingham, Arcia, Parmelee, and perhaps Nunez and a bunch of other former shortstops. It guarantees that Pinto HAS to catch, or he can't play. And so far, he hasn't been able to catch. (Mysteriously, I've heard the throwing out runners was the one thing he was GOOD at as a minor league catcher. So how do you "work" on that?) I 100% admit that even a rusty, overweight Kendrys Morales is a better DH than Pinto. But it forces us to play a poorer outfield defense, and leaves no flexibility to get major league at-bats for young players. Didn't we know going into the year that Willingham, Arcia, and Pinto would require extensive at-bats at DH because they were question-marks in the field? I want to see the young guys play, fail, and succeed. Winning 75 games instead of 72 by adding a rental player is nice for Gardy's legacy/sanity, but ultimately irrelevant to this team's rebuild.

I freaking hate this. It's nothing against Salty, per se - I actually liked him and followed him as a Texas prospect for fantasy baseball reasons. But barely over a year ago, the guy couldn't even crack the majors because of the yips: http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Saltalamacchia-turns-to-psychologist-to-fix-his-?urn=mlb,242145 I don't buy him as a defensive catcher, and given his body type, I doubt he finishes even a 3-year deal as an "everyday catcher" (or 120-game catcher, since everyday catchers don't really exist). His power is almost exclusively from the left side, and good luck with that at Target Field as opposed to Fenway. Yes, he offers raw dumb power at the catcher position, which is "scarce", but not scarce enough to make this guy a $30 million signing. And it's made even more insanely stupid when you consider that a platoon of Pinto and Doumit (or go get a cheaper defensive catcher if you want another veteran option) could very possible offer the same production as Salty from both sides of the plate. This just reeks to me at the Twins having a distrust of young Latin players at the "smart positions", namely catcher, SS, and 2B. Josmil Pinto could be Yadier Molina and this team would still look for a more "trustworthy" veteran presence. And even if you don't agree with ANY of that, it will almost certainly eat up the vast majority of the FA budget, which NEEDS to be spent on starting pitching. Saying that we need 3 starters instead of just 1 isn't a viable argument at chipping away at the problem in any way possible.

I heard this news last night and it made me a little sick, but here's the thing: Yes, you can fault Terry Ryan for being excessively risk averse and having 25-year-old preconceptions of what FA's should cost...and I absolutely fault him for those things. But for a Twins team this bad, I'm don't honestly believe that $68 million for a 1B/DH, even one that hits 25-30 HR's a year, really solves our problems. Especially if you do that in lieu of any other pitching help from free agency or international signings over the next 2-3 years. I think Mauer is usually the 1st baseman next year, and Arcia and Sano look like they are sure bets to be sure-fire MLB players (not necessarily stars) in the upcoming years, and both of them are all-bat-no-defense. Cespedes and Puig absolutely worked out, but like domestic prospects, there is no guarantee that you come up snake eyes with that major investment until you see some MLB results (see: Nishioka, Hideki Irabu, Kaz Matsui, etc.). Until you're at highest level, you never know if there's some irreparable hole in Abreu's swing that good pitchers can exploit. It doesn't change the fact that at the end of the day, the front office has to do SOMETHING aggressive, or we are unlikely to break the top 3 of the AL Central any time soon. Even just sitting on our offensive prospects, we don't have the rotation to run with these teams if we're unwilling to sign high-end starters in FA and are waiting on 18-year-old draft picks to grow up.

Yeah, that's just it. I've tiptoed uncomfortably around the race thing before, but it's not just coincidence that the guys up for long-term deals that actually got them were Mauer, Morneau, and some other midlevel deals (Willingham, Doumit, Cuddy, etc.), whereas there's basically no example of the Twins wanting to keep an African-American or Latin player and said player also wanting to sign here long-term. Yes, they offered big money to Hunter and Santana, but there are too many examples like Castillo, Hudson, Liriano, and on and on where it seemed the relationship should have gone better than it did. Then you see some of Gardy's criticism of Hicks' coachability early this year, and the 4-game benching of Sano in the minors, and you worry that there may be bigger cultural problems in the organization. But the race thing really is speculation/conjecture, and it isn't the most important issue. The problem I have is the framing of the whole question. When you ask a whole team of guys who literally are fringe MLB'ers what they think of their employer in very public setting, I just don't see any value to their response.

I could ramble quite a bit on this, so I'll try and state my opinion once and be concise: I kind of agree with the "Gleeman position" on Gardy and managers in general, which is that they aren't nearly as important as the talent on the field. Despite all logic telling me that a manager (or at least a freaking pitching coach) should get fired after 3 terrible seasons, I can't say that 2013 was Gardy's fault, so I can't really say he should be fired. BUT...if neither Gardy or Anderson is held accountable for the on-field product, and the front office seems so secure in their jobs and their freedom to continue with the way they do business (which includes no indication of any desire to explore expensive free agents as at least a partial solution to the on-field ineptitude)...then how is this a tenable situation going forward? I'm more angry at the front office than Gardy because I can't even imagine an alternative approach that Gardy could have taken to get this team to 80 wins this year. On the other hand, there are a number of ways this front office could have changed in the past, or going forward, that could have resulted in a better product, and they just refuse to do it because they know their way is right. There is a culture of losing brewing on this team, and it will only become more entrenched the longer all of the actors involved feel free to pursue "business as usual". At the end of the day, "fault" isn't the only thing that matters. You have to do something to enact change before you are entitled to receive it.

Only if you know what you're doing... Maybe I'm wrong, but I've never thought of 3rd base as a position that's particularly easy on the body. It doesn't have a life span as short as, say, center field, but you can think of laundry list of 3rd basemen who had back problems and other ailments regularly in their careers as everyday 3rd basemen (Eric Chavez - back, Longoria - foot issues, Zimmerman - every body part). Now, that could be due to the fact that bigger guys play that position, and tend to break down. But at 6'5", Joe is also a "bigger guy". I really don't feel like 3rd base is either a long term solution, nor that it would keep him appreciably healthier over catcher (minus the foul tip aspect).

I may have made this point on a different thread, but even several decades ago (Craig Biggio being my favorite example), if you were a catching prospect that had good speed, or happened to be a very good hitter, organizations would get them out from behind the plate early to prolong their career. I think it's safe to say that the cumulative effect of brain trauma on something as "benign" as a foul tip to the mask wasn't appreciated in the late 1980's as much as it is in 2013. Joe Mauer is stubborn about wanting to do things his way (playing catcher, offseason routine, etc.), but he's also not Cal Ripken. We've seen time and time again that he will sit out if he's not 95% or better - either on his own decision or pressure from those making the $184 million investment. Even if he avoids more head trauma, which seems unlikely, the daily wear and tear on his knees and body are not going to help him as a hitter - it can only hurt. If a 1B/DH split meant 145 games per year of Mauer hitting instead of 120 games as a C/DH, don't you like that scenario better? Ask yourself this, if Justin Morneau had originally been a catcher (and was really good at it), would you advocate moving him back behind the plate this year? If not, then why is the answer any different for Mauer. If you wait for him to have one or two more incidents like this, you've waited too long.

THANK YOU. Even the SABR guys tend to disagree with this, but position scarcity has little or no value unless all 9 (or perhaps at least 6 or 7) of your positional guys are above-replacement hitters for their positions. No matter how good Mauer is playing catcher - the fact that he happens to play catcher is irrelevant to the overall offensive strength of the team...UNLESS you are overflowing with good options at other positions. If Parmelee and Colabello are the 1st base options, and they both stink next year, then you haven't gained anything at all by "opening up" 1st base for somebody else to play (by having Mauer at catcher). Positional scarcity has some validity, but what people miss is that it has as much or more to do with the quality of the other 8 guys than it does with the quality of the guy overperforming at a "scarce" position.

Yeah, the idea that Mauer should go learn 3rd base in his Age 31 season is something out of fantasy baseball, video games, or whatever...but it isn't set in reality. Most 3rd baseman who have been doing it for a decade or longer are starting to wind down by age 31. Reflexes slow, athleticism diminishes, and many of them wind up out of the league by their mid-30's unless they can really hit or if they have a background as a middle infielder and can play other positions. An aging Joe Mauer could hit well enough to play 3rd, but there's no long term value to throwing him out at a completely unfamiliar position that takes entirely different skills than catcher or even 1st base. Couple all that with the fact that one of the top hitting prospects in baseball already plays that position (how well remains to be seen), and this just makes no sense. I think Mauer spends significant time at 1st base next year (if healthy enough to play, of course). He also DH'es some, perhaps against lefties with Colabello playing 1st for those games.