Minnesota Twins: Should he Stay or Should he Go? The Twins, Mauer, and 2019.

Reasons to let Mauer walk

While we just outlined the value that Mauer’s bat brings to the Twins lineup, he still lacks the power to be well-rounded in the position that he plays. The baseball world was teased with the idea of “Mauer Power” during his 2009 MVP season, but that really has been about it for home run power in his career. Amongst qualified MLB first basemen this season, Mauer ranks 29th in slugging.

While Mauer is very good about getting on base, which has value, his wOBA tells a different story. wOBA attempts to combine several hitting statistics in order to get a better all around idea how a hitter is performing. In Mauer’s case, it gives us an idea how to interpret his very good on base abilities and his hard to find power. Mauer finds himself ranked 19th this season in wOBA in comparison to other first basemen.

Another concern is that Mauer may be blocking players that could be taking over at first base. Those players will be outlined later. There is a strong enough possibility that one of those players may develop enough to push an aging Mauer out of the picture.

Lastly, Mauer will still want and need to be paid. It will not be nearly as big of a contract as this last time around. Is he worth any of those 23 million dollars that will be coming off the books as his contract expires? The Twins may find themselves better off spending their money elsewhere than Mauer.