The Twins have signed Joe Mauer to a four year, $33 million deal.
That didn't mean Mauer gave Minnesota a hometown discount, however.
He gets $3.75 million this year, $6.25 million in 2008, $10.5 million in 2009 and $12.5 million in 2010. Mauer has additional award bonuses and gets the right to designate three teams each year that he can't be traded to without his consent.
"This is a market deal," general manager Terry Ryan said. "Don't worry about that."
No word on whether there are any additional years available by option.
Understatement of the day:
The Twins now have Mauer under control until he's 27. It's not unrealistic to think that he could play 10-13 years after that. Any talk about him being a Twin for life is totally premature.
Seems like a pretty fair deal to me. Mauer has some security, the Twins keep him at a decent salary level through the opening (hopefully) of the new ballpark. Hopefully stringing his buddy Morneau along on one-year deals doesn't create too counter-productive.
How the game has changed between native sons: according to baseball-reference, Hrbek made $19,900,00 throughout his entire career.
I guessed that Hrbek made about $100K, $200K, $300K, and $400K from '81 to '84 (since those years aren't listed for Hrbek on baseball-reference). If you use the CPI to adjust Hrbek's career earnings, it becomes approximately equivalent to the purchasing power of 32 million 2006 dollars.
If you spread Mauer's $5M draft bonus evenly over five years, and include his salary through 2010 now (assuming about 3% annual inflation after 2006), Mauer's earnings are approximately equivalent to the purchasing power of 38 million 2006 dollars. Of course, I think that Mauer's going to have a much more valuable career than Hrbek, but adjusting for context the earnings look a little closer.
PECOTA thinks that Mauer would be worth about $140M over the next four years if he was a free agent this offseason. I think PECOTA might have a Mauer jersey hanging in its closet.
Using the CPI is a good baseline, but wouldn't a more accurate comparison of the two come from translating Hrbek's numbers into a contemporary range and then extrapolating his salary based on that of comparable players to account for the shift in market value? Or is it safe to assume that Hrbek was just as valuable during his career as he would be now? Or would he be less valuable?
No doubt Mauer will be far and away the more valuable player in the long-term, even if he for some reason follows a Hrbek-like career evolution. If we were to assume a career more like Yogi Berra's or Ivan Rodriguez's for Mauer, he probably becomes the most valuable Twin ever, right?
It depends on whether you care about adjusting for the baseball market or adjusting for their purchasing power. I was mainly just pointing out that there is a context adjustment to be made if those numbers are to be meaningfully compared at all.
Certainly. What I was attempting to point out in the original comment was simply that we're approaching a point where marquee, hometown players are nearly earning more money in four years than their predecessors earned in an entire career, even when you adjust for the change in the purchasing power of a dollar over the last twenty-odd years.
Factoring in the changes in baseball since Hrbek's time (which he likely would have benefited from in a massive way, both statistically and financially) would probably skew things even more, but it would be interesting to see how he'd fit in.
Bah, he's no Corky Miller.
We really miss Henry Blanco.