Beton Brut

These last several posts bring the thread full circle nicely since its resurrection. The initial responses, while on the surface didn't address the HR spike in '09 and instead somewhat distractedly discussed Joe's penchant for watching first pitches go by (something he's always done and thus aren't relevant to '09), nevertheless served to somewhat calm my uneasiness about the outlier stats of '09. Nick's comments about the doubles, coupled with my own observation of the across-the-board Twins' power drop at TF in '10 vs HHH '09 do offer an explanation that is as reasonable as the more nefarious alternative. Some of the more statistically inclined could investigate Joe's 2010 doubles landing spots further to see if they would have been potential HHH HR's, but that would be pushing already 2nd degree speculation into the 3rd degree. The subsequent injury issues in '11 and now Joe being an older, different player on a different team goes some way toward explaining the drop off. I appreciate the Twins Daily community not jumping all over me on my first post.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but this topic has been tugging at me for months and instead of starting a new thread, I thought I'd kind of bury my thoughts somewhat inconspicuously into an existing one. I'm a Twins fan, a fan of your old Nick's Twins Blog, and a daily Twins Daily reader. I appreciate the sensitivity of the issue, but the topic warrants some thoughtful discussion, maybe in a new thread. Since his graduation to the majors, I've been mostly mezzo-mezzo towards Joe, although I've certainly never rooted against the guy. The media and the fans heaped praise and now cash on him and he's never in my eyes really been that kind of Star player, like a Puck or even a Torii, but he's not shooting himself or anybody else, driving 100 mph down the highway, jumping into the stands to punch people, etc. so I qualify this post to let you all know that this has nothing to do with bitterness about a contract, animosity about bilateral leg weakness, shampoo commercials, or any of the other nonsense for which a good ball player got booed last year. Furthermore, unlike twinswon1991 above, I won't resort to baseless bomb throwing but will instead make statistical arguments, the TwinsDaily standby, and the gut test to substantiate the claim. The claim is that it is reasonable to be suspect of Joe Mauer's 2009 performance. The cursory data is all here: http://www.fangraphs.com/forums/topic.php?id=33164 The most compelling of which, in my mind, is that in the 112 recorded seasons of baseball, only 57 players ever had a one year spike in HR #'s comparable to Mauer's, and 25 of those have happened since 1993. It wouldn't hold up in court but makes one think. Additionally, we're talking about a lot of money, not just to Mauer, but to his agent and the precedent his contract sets to other players' pending future contracts and the implications on those agents' fees etc. It's not unreasonable, then, to imagine a scenario, and I'm only posing this as a framing hypothetical, where once every off season or two, when these huge contracts loom in the next year, a super agent would know which PED's can NOT currently be tested for (because he pays handsomely for this information), sits down with the looming super contract star and basically tell them, "What if I could get you a bump in performance, a reduction in downtime, and another zero on your paycheck, without risk of failing a test? And I could guarantee it." There is little in our history - corporate, sporting, or otherwise - that would make me think this scenario should be dismissed out of hand. And I type all of this with heavy fingers, as I want all of it to be untrue. I hope Joe hits 25 hr next year and the year after to put this issue to rest. But until then, this question will remain for me.