Joe Mauer, according to Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports will only negotiate an extension through spring training, but once the season begins he will be focused on baseball, and, if no deal gets done, will enter free agency following the year.  The Twins are in between a rock and a hard place.  They are about to open a new stadium with a much better deal for the home team than they have ever had before.  Playing in the Metrodome, a large part of each ticket, soda and parking went to either the city or the Vikings- not to the Twins.   They should be able to raise their payroll quite a bit with the new home.  But on the other hand, to give Joe Mauer,  what should be called Joe Mauer money, they would still have to commit a quarter of the teams payroll  to him, which would not allow them really to build any kind of championship caliber team.  If Mauer is serious about wanting to win, he can’t actually expect the Twins to pony up $22-$25 million.  Of course, if he wants the money and the chance to win, then he has to go out to the free agent market.

The problem is that in the next year, the Twins world financial world will change.  They will have more money to sign those extra pieces to move a very good team to great.  But they won’t have that if they give all that “extra money” to Joe Mauer.  Yet, its also not fair to Mauer to expect him to take such a severe home-town discount just to help the team.  The Twins can project how much more revenue they will recieve from the new stadium, but they can’t know for sure in this economy without at least one year there.  How can you commit to one player, even the guy that could be the greatest catcher ever, if you don’t really know what your financial model will look like 5 year down the road?

Perhaps this is an unusual contract model.  One where the player has an option, say every other year, to nullify the agreement if he feels the team isn’t trying to win.  That way, free agency is never too far away. It means also that the Twins can spend a large amount of money up front to keep him, but perhaps not as large as what the Yankees or Red Sox might give him.  The problem is that for a player who plays the hardest, most dangerous position on the field, not cashing in on the guaranteed payday is a very risky thing.  Think about Ray Fosse?

One won’t be able to blame Joe Mauer if he decides to test free agency.  One cannot possibly blame the Twins if they decide that tying up that large of a percentage of the payroll with one player is only handcuffing the GM (ask the Rangers how that worked out).  Forget the Yankees winning the World Series, this is where the economics of baseball show their problems.