Some clarity to Joe Mauer's decline

So ... what to make of Joe Mauer's public admission to the Pioneer Press' Brian Murphy that symptoms from his 2013 continued to plague him even last season?

First, we need to understand exactly what Mauer said and what he didn't. If you haven't read Murphy's story, do so. The link's above. The aggregation sites (and this very post) distill and, even without intending to, distort the story ever so slightly. Go to the original source; if nothing else, Murphy deserves the clicks.

The blurred vision is described as occasional and was, Mauer believes, triggered by bright light. (He will try playing with sunglasses during spring training next month; that obvious change in his routine is probably what prompted this revelation.) And he implies that he didn't let team management know of the vision problems.

For what it's worth, Mauer's slash stats in the daytime last season were markedly lower than his numbers in night games. But even his nighttime numbers weren't up to his career standards. His strikeout rate was also markedly higher in day games. (Data from Baseball Reference.) Checking 2013's splits -- that being his last season behind the dish, a season that ended with his concussion and that saw him post his third-best OPS+ -- he hit better in day games than at night, but so slightly that it may well be just statistical noise.

Let's ask ourselves some questions:

Was Mauer hurting the team by playing? My answer is no. He wasn't Joe Mauer, chronic batting title contender, but he still had the best on-base percentage on the roster other than Miguel Sano, who was only there for half the season. He was roughly a league-average hitter last year; that is also true of Brian Dozier and Trevor Plouffe.

Should Paul Molitor, Tom Brunansky and the rest of the brain trust have known? The culture of athletics, especially at this rarefied level, is: Play through it. Mauer's taken a great deal of public criticism (even if he never acknowledges it) as a brittle "China doll," and that may have led him to hide his recurring symptoms. It seems inevitable that the manager, coaches and front office could tell that it wasn't the same Mauer as before the 2013 concussion, but that there were specific concussion symptoms recurring, that might not have been obvious even to people close to him.

Is it going to get better? Mauer sounds optimistic. He says he hasn't had any symptoms recur during his workouts the last three months, and that that hasn't been the case for a couple of years. But without digging through the archives, I think he's said the same thing the last couple of spring trainings.

Here's the deal: Mauer turns 33 in April. He spent a decade behind the plate. Even if his brain is fully healed from the 2013 trauma, age and other physical decline takes their toll. It is simply unrealistic to expect him to return to hitting .330 as he did in his mid-20s.

I'd love to see Mauer rebound to that level, but I don't expect it. I have more hope now than I did before reading Murphy's piece that he will have a better year in 2016 than in 2015.

A catcher and his concussions

A dazed Alex Avila was pulled from Sunday's game
after taking a foul ball in the face mask.

Catchers, it has been noted over the years, generally age quickly. As we learn more about concussions, it seems reasonable to theorize that foul tips off the mask are no small part of that.

Alex Avila, the Detroit catcher, left Sunday's division series game after yet another foul ball off his mask. This is at least the third concussion he has suffered this season alone, and his second in less than two months. He went on the concussion disabled list last season. He has probably had other concussions that he never admitted.

The Tigers season is over with their loss Sunday, so Avila has the rest of the winter to recover. It may -- or may not -- be enough time.

Avila was a good hitting catcher a few years ago -- .295/.389/.506 with 19 homers in 2011 -- but he hasn't approached that level since.

Which is to say, he isn't Joe Mauer -- a catcher whose bat is good enough to play at another position. If Avila can't catch, he can't play in the majors. And the way his concussions are adding up, one has to wonder if he should catch.

It's his life, and his livelihood, and it's not my place to say aye or nay to him. But I expect the Detroit front office will this winter, at the least, line up some alternatives to Avila as the regular backstop.

Avila's only 27. But it looks like a very old 27.

Catchers masks and concussions

Joe Mauer blocks a ball in a spring training
drill. The metal in his face mask is
titanium — stronger than steel, but also
less absorbant.

Mike Bernardino on Tuesday published this piece posing the intriguing question: Is the growing popularity of titanium catchers masks linked to the rash of foul-tip concussions?

My immediate reaction was to doubt the entire premise. It seemed likely to me that we're merely more aware of catcher concussions, not that we're actually seeing more concussions.

But then I started thinking about the physics involved. Titantium is stronger than steel, so it doesn't bend as much when a ball smashes into it. It's also considerably lighter — which makes titanium masks more comfortable— which lessens the resistance to the force.

It's important to realize that it isn't the impact itself that causes most concussions — it's the movement that results from the impact. The brain floats inside the fluid-filled skull. The head is hit at one place, causing the head to move with the force of the blow. The brain remains relatively stable, but the skull crashes into it from the movement. That's where the injury occurs.

If indeed the steel masks absorb more of the blow without transferring it to the head, then yes, the titanium masks are more of a risk to the wearer.

According to Bernadino, both Joe Mauer and Ryan Doumit were wearing titanium masks when they sustained their concussions. So was Alex Avila of the Detroit Tigers, who has reportedly returned to wearing steel now that he's back in in the lineup.

Certainly the lighter weight of the titanium masks is an attractive feature. But the ultimate purpose of the face mask is to protect the wearer. Titanium certainly does a fine job of protecting the wearer from the ball itself.  It may not be adequate in protecting the wearer from the force of the ball — and that's no small concern.

Joe Mauer and the future of catching

Joe Mauer is primarily a catcher — but for how much longer?
(His highlighted fingernails are to make it easier for the
pitcher to read his pitch calls.)

It has been a topic of discussion practically since Joe Mauer reached the major leagues: How long will he remain a catcher?

Catchers — particularly catchers who are outstanding hitters — tend to have short careers. For every Yogi Berra or Pudge Fisk there's a Johnny Bench or Ted Simmons, essentially burned to a crisp by their early 30s. Not only were Bench's and Simmons' abilities at the plate ground away by their early 30s by the strain of catching, their ability to simply play the position on a regular basis was gone too.

Mauer is 30 now. While he hasn't carried the workload in his 20s that many of the catching greats before him have -- he has only once caught as many as 120 games in a season -- he is fast approaching the age where the position historically catches up to the best. And this week we all got a sharp reminder of why catcher is the most physically punishing position in the game, when Mauer went on the concussion disabled list.

Mauer has now missed two games, and nobody really has any idea if he'll be back in a week or if he's done for the year. Brain injuries are not easily diagnosed or treated. Twins fans learned that lesson with Justin Morneau.

Pat Reusse offered two predictions Tuesday in a Star Tribune blog post on catchers and concussions, one specific to Mauer and the other general.

Mauer, he said, will be a first baseman in 2014 and leave catching behind.

And teams, he said, will stop allowing good hitters to put themselves at risk behind the plate. A hitter as talented as Mauer will be moved, quickly, to a less hazardous position. Catcher will become the domain of defensive specialists who hit at the bottom of the order.

Prediction No. 1 may indeed prove true — if. If Mauer's out for an extended period, that could scare him, and the front office, into making the switch.

Doing that would prompt the Twins to decline re-signing Morneau (a free agent after the season), which is a decision they might reach regardless. It would probably keep them out of the bidding for Cuban defector Jose Abreu, which they may or may not enter. It would force them to either hasten the arrival of prospect Josmil Pinto next season or get by with the combo of Ryan Doumit and Chris Herrmann.

None of those side effects would necessarily be deal breakers if the team and the player decide a position shift is in their best interests.

Prediction No. 2 is moot. That's what catcher is — a position of defensive specialists who hit at the bottom of the order. Joe Mauer is the exception to the rule.

And the truth is that teams with a Mauer-caliber hitter behind the dish tend to be really good, because that kind of hitter at a defense-first position is so rare. Make a list of the greatest teams of all time, and almost all will have a Hall of Fame caliber catcher. (The '27 Yankees are the exception.) The Reds of the 1970s had Bench. The Yankees of the 1930s had Bill Dickey. The Yankees of the 1950s had Berra. The Dodgers of the 1950s had Roy Campanella. The Athletics of the early 1930s had Mickey Cochrane. The Yankees of the late 1990s had Jorge Posada.

That kind of advantage is a powerful incentive to let a quality hitter who is also a quality receiver stay at catcher.

The Twins have wasted a few years of Mauer's catching prime by surrounding him with inadequate talent. One has to wonder now how much of his prime will be left when the Miguel Sano/Byron Buxton wave takes hold.

The equation hasn't changed. Mauer is more valuable as a catcher than as a first baseman. But he's more valuable as a first baseman than on the shelf. And now that he's in his thirties, that second sentence is gaining importance.

Pic of the Week

Ryan Doumit dodges a pitch during the first inning
Monday in Kansas City.

This photo by midweek took on some different implications. It wasn't until Wednesday that Doumit revealed that he had sustained a concussion on Sunday. He'd had a bad flight to Kansas City — flying and concussions don't mix well — but played Monday and was in the lineup Wednesday before conceding that he was too woozy to be effective. He's now on the seven-day concussion DL, which hardly means he'll be back in a week.

Doumit says he's had "many, many" concussions from foul tips; that's almost certainly true for Joe Mauer or pretty much any veteran backstop. Catching is rough duty.

On Justin Morneau's future

A more slender Justin Morneau signs autographs
Friday at the Twins complex in Fort Myers, Fla.

Lake Crystal's most famous part-time resident spoke Friday to the assembled reporters at Twins spring training, and his comments are being dissected with the detail generally used for analyzing presidential statements on foreign crises.

Such is the importance of Justin Morneau to the Twins, not only in 2012 but beyond. A healthy Morneau is a middle-of-the-lineup force, but he hasn't had a fully healthy season since 2008, and the last two have been shortened and marred by recurring concussions.

Tomorrow isn't promised to any of us. Morneau knows that all too well.

Morneau said nothing startling -- unless you regard honesty as startling, which I suppose it is when coming from an athlete about injury -- when answering questions about the possibility of future concussions:

"I don't think there will be a career if it's something I'm dealing with (for the long term). That's the reality of the whole thing. I'm obviously not going to continue to mess around with this if it continues to be a problem. There comes a point where you can only torture yourself for so long. It's something I love to do but you keep preparing and you keep being left out. That's something that nobody wants to go through."

Yes, that sounds like a guy who has contemplated retirement. Is that really a surprise? Had he denied retirement as an option, I would scoff. Had he come out claiming that all is well, I would be skeptical. He's had a year and a half of recurring concussion symptoms, and he doesn't know if he's out of the woods yet.

He's also not ready to pull the plug on his playing days. We shouldn't be eager to do so either.

The Twins are obviously banking on Morneau. They've committed $14 million to him in each of 2012 and 2013. I'm not sure how much of that, if any, is covered by insurance. (As a general thing, teams can no longer realistically insure contracts from injuries that the player has had before, and Morneau's concussion history predates his current deal.) They have some low-priced options in reserve, but they'd much prefer to keep them in reserve.

For now, the status remains quo. Morneau is playing. He took part in the drills Friday. I'll evaluate the various Plan B's if and when he has to back off. 

On the disabled list

Denard Span was cleared by a physician in Kansas City
after this collision, but now has been diagnosed with
a concussion and whiplash.

Denard Span was put on the seven-day concussion disabled list Thursday night. This makes 12 members of the Twins' Opening Day roster — 12 of 25 — to go on a DL this season, and it's just June 10.

I'll assume this is some sort of record, partly because it is far more common now for players to go on the disabled list than it was 50 or even 20 years ago — more common not because the players today are wimpier or more injury prone, but because it's a lot easier for teams to use the DL and because it improves the quality of play for injured players to heal.

I'm not sure when a formal mechanism to replace an injured player temporarily was established. I know there was a disabled list in 1961, because in his diary book of the Cincinnati Reds' pennant winning season (Pennant Race), pitcher Jim Brosnan makes reference to his roommate, Howie Nunn, going on the disabled list. By the time I started paying attention to such things, sometime in the 1970s, there were two disabled lists — a 10-day and a 21-day, and teams could have no more than two players on the 10-day DL. There may well have been a limit on the 21-day DL.

Caps on the disabled list inevitably meant that players played, often poorly, with injuries. (Atlanta's Chipper Jones this week complained that teammate Jason Hayward should be playing hurt; 80 percent of Hayward is better than most players, Jones claimed. I doubt that; I suspect that Justin Morneau is playing at a bit more than 80 percent of his ability, but the missing 20-15 percent is the difference between being a star and his current, readily replaced, level of production.)

About 20 years ago the 10- and 21-day DLs were abolished and replaced with the current standard 15-day DL. There's also a 60-day DL for long-term injuries, which removes the player from the 40-man major league roster (Joe Mauer and Tsuytoshi Nishioka are on the 60-day DL); the seven-day concussion DL (new this year); and two forms of "family leave," a five-day bereavement leave for a death in the family and a three-day paternity leave for births.

The shorter the period of absence, the easier it is for a club to put a player on the DL. That's the reason for the new concussion list, to make it less risky for the team to sideline a player with a concussion. If Span's symptoms clear in another two days, the Twins will still have him back three days later; if they had put him on the 15-day DL, they'd be stuck without him.

---

Twins from the Opening Day roster to hit the disabled list this season:

Jason Kubel*
Francisco Liriano
Joe Mauer **
Jose Mijares
Joe Nathan*
Tsuyoshi Nishioka**
Glen Perkins*
Kevin Slowey*
Denard Span***
Jim Thome*
Jason Repko
Delmon Young



*= currently on the 15-day DL
**= currently on the 60-day DL
***= currently on the concussion DL

Notes, quotes and comment

The player-to-be-named in the Brian Fuentes deal got named Wednesday. It's Loek Van Mil, the 7-foot-1 Dutch pitcher who's been kicking around the Twins organization for a few years, showing signs of good stuff and spending lots of time on the disabled list.

Van Mil had been waived off the 40-man roster to make room for Fuentes, having run up an ERA of 6.15 in Double A/High A this season. That made him more a novelty act than a prospect, although if he ever masters something other than a fast ball and stay healthy for a full year, he could still amount to something.

---

Wondering how the Twins will deal with the starting rotation when Kevin Slowey returns? So am I, but Ron Gardenhire sounds intent on giving Francisco Liriano extra rest between starts.

That can't hurt. Carl Pavano has also been on record as preferring extra rest. I don't know that it will be a straight six-man rotation, but right now I don't see anybody who deserves to be bumped out of the mix entirely when Slowey's ready.

---

If you haven't seen this already, read Jerry Crasnick's ESPN piece on concussions in baseball.

There's plenty of speculation now that Justin Morneau won't be back this season. It's all speculation; nobody knows for sure. We do know that even if he stopped having symptoms this week, there's little opportunity for a minor league rehab assignment -- the Twins affiliates were almost universally terrible this season, and only one team made their league playoffs.

---

Rob Dibble got bounced from the Nationals broadcast team. Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.