One of the things that I noticed in the past couple of days was Joe Mauer, arguably the best catcher in my generation and your older brother generation signing a monstrous eight year, 183 million dollar deal with the Minnesota Twins. I, for one am applauding this decision by both sides of the spectrum.
The Twins side of things I am glad that they realized that even though the money is pretty steep, they knew they had to mortgage the future on Mauer. They didn't go cheap on him and they went for it. The city would have burned down had Mauer left because the Twins didn't give him enough. I believe personally that Minnesota would probably rank baseball second in professional sports fandom (1. Hockey 2. Baseball 3. Football 4. Basketball).
I praise Mauer for staying in his home town of Minneapolis/St. Paul and staying with his best buddy Justin Morneau is just awesome. I love that Mauer said "I could get 10 years 250 million this summer on the open market, but this has always been my home so screw it, I will be okay with making 23 million a year." To me that speaks volumes of the type of person that Mauer really is. But the subsection of this story for me as a Milwaukee Brewer fans, does this now put pressure on the Brewers to get Prince Fielder to a long term deal?
Tom Hardicourt, the Prince of Darkness wrote a blog post asking the same sort of questions but I never really think it covered whether this helped the Brewers' chances or hurt them. For Hardicourt, it's hard for him to ask that question because you are going to get the politically correct answer rather than the real answer.
I feel like the extension depends on how the season goes honestly. My Brewer stuff will not come out until right before the season by the way so I really do not want to let you in on what I am predicting for the upcoming year. I really want to believe that Fielder doesn't buy into the bullshit that Scott Boras is selling right now about how he will make x amount of dollars from the big markets if he has a mega-year. Am I probably naive for thinking this way? Absolutely, but do I think Mauer saying "I like where I am, and I don't need to leave this place for more money" gets into Prince's head a bit? Yeah it does.
He sees the dollar signs that Mauer made and it would be shocked if it's over 135 million dollars for multiple reasons... The sudden influx of so many good first basemen, the weight issue, and the perceived attitude that people feel Fielder has. In my opinion, Prince knows if he has a huge year like he has done the last two years, the money increases. He knows that, I know that, you know that, Scott Boras knows that. I just worry (sad I have to think this way) that maybe Fielder wants his own spotlight.
No one can argue that Fielder/Braun share the spotlight like Manny/Big Papi did for a bunch of years. When will Fielder say, "Hey I want my own spotlight in Baltimore, or some other average team" or hopefully that never is the case. To me, I think the Fielder contract will show the true colors of Prince himself.
-Charlie.
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