The HOF argument for me—Mauer did what no other catcher in the history of baseball could do— three batting titles.Man, I hate to do this, but I have to pose a contrarian opinion regarding Mauer in the HOF. The guy was the most overpaid singles/slap hitter the game has ever seen. Couldn't hit for power at all, save for one blip season where he had 28. Don't think he was ever over 20 again, might not have ever even surpassed 15 if memory serves. He was great at the things he was good at, but ultimately was in imperfect player that got paid too much money by a cash-strapped front office that struggled to build anything more than divisional round playoff teams during his career. I like Joe a lot as a human and loved watching him in his prime years when he was still a catcher, but by the last 4-5 years of his career I was really hoping the Twins would move on from him and his contract. His deal is a lot like the Vikings Kirk Cousins situation in my opinion.
Sure the contract was spendy for Twins at the end, but that doesn’t take away from how great he was in his prime.