ShareThisIt is a contract issue that will make ace pitcher Roy Halladay's status with the Toronto Blue Jays pale in comparison. You want a feeding frenzy? Wait until you see what happens if catcher Joe Mauer walks away from the Minnesota Twins after 2010.
He'll be 27, and if he keeps hitting the way he has since coming off the disabled list in early May, he will have at least three batting titles to his credit. He and Justin Morneau are known as the "M&M'' Boys, and as Morneau mentioned former Twins in Tuesday night's All-Star Game such as Johan Santana and Torii Hunter -- who was not in the lineup because of injury -- you wondered if Morneau is starting to worry about being the last man standing.
Morneau, who is in the middle of an $80-million contract that runs through 2013, is not only Mauer's partner in the middle of the Twins lineup. He's the little voice that whispers in Mauer's ear when it's time to kick back. In a recent Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune story, their relationship was described thusly: "When Morneau won MVP in 2006, a few teammates credited Mauer with helping Morneau stay in. Morneau says he taught Mauer how to go out."
Mauer has won two of the past three American League batting titles and is hitting .389 with 14 home runs and 45 runs batted in despite missing a month with a back injury. The first overall selection in 2001 out of Cretin High School in St. Paul, he is a model of consistency with a swing that is a thing of beauty.
Nobody has a better view of what Mauer does than Morneau, who bats behind him in the Twins lineup and gets to see his approach up close when he's in the on-deck circle.
"It's his patience and his ability to not chase pitches out of the strike zone that is amazing," said Morneau, a native of New Westminster, British Columbia. "He rarely swings at a bad pitch. You see a guy go three or four games without swinging at a pitch outside of the strike zone ... and as a hitter, that's just amazing.?
"And when he does go after those pitches? He rarely misses."
It's easy to see why Morneau would be concerned about being last man standing. The Twins are moving into a new ballpark next year and should be able to generate significant revenue but Morneau has said publicly be thinks the club needs to make a statement now about a willingness to spend money to win in order to convince Mauer to stay.
His fellow Canadian All-Star Jason Bay labored in a no-win situation in Pittsburgh before being traded to the Boston Red Sox last season, only to have the Red Sox be eliminated in the Championship Series.
Bay, one of just eight active players to have three seasons of at least 30 homers, 100 runs, 100 runs batted in and 10 steals, is eligible for free agency at the end of the year. The Red Sox said in spring training they'd wait until the off-season to broach the subject and they've held firm to the commitment despite Bay's abundant popularity in Boston, where he is widely viewed as the anti-Manny Ramirez.
Unlike Morneau, who was drafted and developed by the Twins, Bay has been traded four times since he was drafted by the Montreal Expos in the 22nd round of the 2000 draft. Suffice it to say that he's tired of moving around.
"I shouldn't say I hate change, but I've been traded four times," said Bay. "You like a little stability. Every team has great guys and all that stuff, but if you ask a baseball player to make a list, Boston would be one of the teams on it, more than likely."
As Halladay so rightly noted, this is a "fragile" game. The window of opportunity is shorter than it looks to a younger player. So the guess here is that while Morneau will continue to be amazed this year by the success of the other half of the "M&M Boys,'' and maybe even see his friend hit .400, part of him will wonder where it is all leading.?
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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