Wow! I wonder how one calculates such "worth".
everything a team could ask for. He sells a million jerseys, is the best catcher in a long time (if not ever), along with being a home grown talent from Minnesota. He'll make the Twins all that money back through marketing and playoff games.
Plus with the new stadium opening up they needed someone to continue to fill seats. Mauer accomplishes this, he is much more worth 180 million then Teixeira.
A) How much is it going to cost to see a Twins game?
B) Is this going to drive other salaries and ticket prices higher?
C) Are the Twins going to be able to afford other players?
D) Would Joe Mauer be cheated if he got say 164 million dollars instead?
E) Is playing a game for the entertainment of others really "worth" such money?
F) If it is, what does that say about the worth of ordinary folk, or perhaps minimum wage workers, or soldiers, or the person who saves your son's life?
is having a case of the Mondays a little early....
Joe Mauer got as much money as he did because Joe Mauer is the only person in the world at this moment that can play catcher the way he does. It's simple economics. The demand for a Joe Mauer is incredibly high and the supply is low (1, to be exact), therefore he's priced astronomically high.
On the other hand, I, or anyone else for that matter, could go out and become a paramedic and save someone's life. However, the demand is lower and the supply is much higher for a paramedic. Therefore, they're not paid as much.
Jobs don't pay based on what they bring to society. They pay based on how many people are available to fill those services.
and how much people are willing to pay to watch them do their job.
Can't see why skunk bear was negged. All six questions are good ones. As for "D" a smart man once told me that when you have that many zeros, the numbers up front don't matter.
E) Is playing a game for the entertainment of others really "worth" such money?People pay for it, so yes.
Joe Mauer is surely a future HOFer.
Considering the Marlins field a team that is damn near equivalent to this contract... wow.
I wish I played baseball!!
I am glad they held onto him. It is nice to see a superstar stay with the hometown team instead of going on one of the evil empires.
Amen.
dollar signs made it a little easier. But I totally agree and he seems like a stand-up dude.
If he weren't playing for the damn Twins, I would totally agree with you. Since it's the Twins, I'm pro-empire. The faster others can loot the home-grown talent the better.
Good for the Twins, bad for the rest of the teams in the Central.
4th largest deal in history.
I have no problem with the money, but that's an awful long time to lock up a catcher, especially when he's about to turn 27 and catchers generally start to go off the cliff at age 32. And when catchers burn out, they burn out fast.
Mauer's destined to become a corner infielder once the daily catching starts wearing on him. Even if he doesn't, he can DH. If he weren't such a fantastic defensive catcher, he'd already be a 3rd baseman.
I agree that you don't want to lock up a normal catcher into his 30's, but normal catchers don't win batting titles annually either.
Good day for baseball. Always nice to see one player stick with one team.
Good for Joe Mauer, I think he is easily worth 184 Million Dollars. Bad for the Twins is that Joe Nathan is done for the rest of the year according to an ESPN report. This should leave the Central Division wide open. Go Tigers
Joe Nathan's blown save % is about 10%. MLB's average is about 14%. If you are generous and determine that Minnesota's blown save percentage is at 20% this year, that will only be about 3 or 4 fewer wins.
Considering that the Twins have added Jim Thome at DH, JJ Hardy at SS, and have the returning Francisco Liriano (who is lighting up spring training) as well as Pat Neshek, AND a healthy Justin Morneau (who was absent during the overhaul of the Tigers) and Delmon Young is 30 pounds lighter, all this means is that the Twins will only win about 92 games, instead of 96.
about baseball. I didn't even know who he was until I saw the PS3 commercial with him in explaining who he was to that guy.
No one should make that much money a year for playing baseball IMO. The spending is out of control in professional sports. It just drives up the costs for everyday hard-working American fans that go to the games. Bring on a salary cap.
A Twins fan can catch a game, a hotdog, and parking at the new stadium for, on the low end, $20 (ticket is $13, hot dog is $3, transportation to stadium is $2.50).
Perhaps your argument is better pointed at the NFL (where that pesky salary cap exists).
While you're at it, how much does a Michigan home football game cost?
That's not really a fair comparison, though. When you have 81 home games instead of eight, you can afford to make tickets a little cheaper.
I agree with what you're saying for the most part. But, it is important to keep in mind that baseball teams have 81 home games a year whereas NFL teams get 8, or UM football with 6-7. Per game tickets are typically cheaper the more home games there are to attend.
However with that said, compared to other teams (Cubs) getting a ticket for $13 is a steal.
In a free market economy, how can you argue that anyone is paid too little or paid too much?
"If it is, what does that say about the worth of ordinary folk, or perhaps minimum wage workers, or soldiers, or the person who saves your son's life? "
It says that ordinary folks have ordinary skill sets that aren't as marketable as Mauer. I work with 800 cops and about 600 firemen. The skills needed to be a fireman? Youth...strength...the ability to take orders. The overwhelming majority of men (and quite a few women) between the ages of 18-24 could do it adequately enough.
Maybe one person in a billion can do what Mauer does.
He's a freak of genetics. He was an all-american QB in high school as well.
"No one should make that much money a year for playing baseball IMO. The spending is out of control in professional sports. It just drives up the costs for everyday hard-working American fans that go to the games. Bring on a salary cap."
So the owners should make the money instead? The spending is a reflection of how much they earn and the #1 place for their revenue is television. Yeah, you can't go to a game for $5 anymore, but you can see every game in the major leagues for $12 a month on your computer. I don't know what the MLB package for television is. And ESPN brings you a ton of games every year. That comes out to about $2 a month in your cable bill.
Capitalism is pretty goddamn cool sometimes.
of such salaries I expected. But such vehement defenses go beyond what I expected. Yes, we live in a modified free market economy. But, it is excesses such as this that call the validity of such a system into question.
I wonder how many MGoBloggers have decent lives because people who didn't have unique skill sets unionized.
Besides, how important is baseball? Yes I know this is a sports blog. I'm a fan too. But is there ever a point at which it is too much?
Finally, while my opinion could be inferred by what questions I asked, nevertheless all I did was ask questions. This may be a sports blog, but it is a University of Michigan sports blog, and I thought serious questions would be considered seriously.
Negative 13 and counting? Ok, I guess there is something to be learned here. Now if I can just figure out what it is.
As a Michigan grad that is a Minnesota sports fan, this is some of the best sports news I've gotten in awhile.
So happy Joe Mauer is sticking around!
He is a truly complete player and deserves every penny of that hefty check
"But, it is excesses such as this that call the validity of such a system into question. "
So, you're cool with an owner making several hundred million a year, but not the player who generates that revenue?
"Besides, how important is baseball? Yes I know this is a sports blog. I'm a fan too. But is there ever a point at which it is too much?"
Baseball is a multi-billion dollar industry that employs hundreds of thousands of employees. How important is ANY industry? Steven Spielberg is worth about $3 billion and he made it by turning his parental abandonment issues into movies. (seriously, therapy wouldn't have been cheaper than A.I., Steve?)
You know there was talk about contraction a few years ago and the Twins had a target on them, right? This basically is a place-holder. For the next 10 years, you're not going to be able to say that they're treading water as a franchise (as opposed to the Royals or Pirates). We don't need a salary cap, we need a salary floor (Hello, Marlins).
The Red Sox, Yankees and Cubs make an assload of money. Hell, the Tribune Company screwed the Cubs fans out of their money for 50 years. Wrigley was SUCH a draw on its own that it didn't make sense for Trib to invest anything in the team. They were selling out 81 games a year and getting good ratings (since they weren't up against anything) on WGN. Ever tried to get a ticket for a game at Fenway? I've been trying to get a non-scalped ticket there for a DECADE. Yankees tickets are pretty easy to get, but YES and Steinbrenner's dirty Nixon/Ohio State money sort of change things.
Ever been to the Louvre? Have you ever seen the crowds in front of the Mona Lisa? If you haven't, imagine the red carpet in front of a big movie premiere. When the limos open and the star steps out, that's what the Mona Lisa exhibit looks like.
What's it worth? It's just some swirls of paint on an old canvas. Hell, it's a little painting.
David Geffen sold a Jackson Pollack canvas for $150 million. Hell, it LITERALLY is splatters and swirls of paint on a canvas. He sold a De Kooning painting for about $130 million. Ryoei Saito paid over $100 million for Picasso's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" and then said he that when he died, he was going to be cremated with the painting. And then he drove his paper company into the ground (who didn't see that coming?) and the painting disappeared. It's rumored to be somewhere in Switzerland now.
As much as I love art, are any of those paintings REALLY worth that? Sure...provided some nitwit on the other end is willing to sign the check.
March 21st, 2010 at 10:01 PM ^
We don't need a salary cap, we need a salary floor (Hello, Marlins).
I'm in favor of both. The best way to ensure something close to competitive balance is to keep payrolls as close to each other as possible. Just one of the two doesn't do enough. If a salary floor forces the Marlins to spend $50 million, OK, but then they're still trying to compete with franchises spending three to four times that amount.
I didn't know the Twins owner was making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. I thought they were struggling.
I didn't know that Joe Mauer was personally making these profits possible. I thought people went to see the Twins play. I thought that they did that long before Joe Mauer started playing.
I thought that the fans paid for such salaries by buying expensive tickets to games and by watching pay TV that runs so many commercials that they often miss part of the game.
How many businesses have so many bidders for a worker's services?
Do you think that if there were just two leagues and every player signed a contract with the league, and not the team, and was then assigned to the whichever team that you would see such salaries?
You seem to be aware of many excesses. But you can't see this might be one?
Hell, and here I was willing to settle on MLB umpire salary of 120k minimum. Some of those vets make closer to 250k for 7 months of work.
Does this mean the Twins are no longer going to be a small-market team? If so, that's bad news for the Tigers.
ignore
Unless you share revenues the way that the NFL does, it's very hard to make a cap work in any sort of equitable way.
"I didn't know the Twins owner was making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. I thought they were struggling."
Depends on how you do the math. There is the money you make from your franchise, then there's the money you get from the Yankees from the luxury tax, there's the shared MLB properties money, and there's the shared TV revenue.
The Twins are owned by the Pohlad family. They bought it from Calvin Griffith for 1/10th of what its currently worth.
"I didn't know that Joe Mauer was personally making these profits possible. I thought people went to see the Twins play. I thought that they did that long before Joe Mauer started playing."
Name another Twin. Ask the Pirates how much Barry Bonds was worth to their franchise.
"You seem to be aware of many excesses. But you can't see this might be one?"
No. Welcome to the free market.
Some free market! The taxpayers of Hennepin County paid for most of the new stadium. In a true free market that wouldn't happen.
That commercial for MLB 10: The Show is pretty damn funny. Played the demo the other day, much better than the 09 version. Might have to go buy it.