I recently had a friend of mine up and move to Minneapolis. A graduate student at College Park when I entered as a freshman, he recently completed his PhD in Political Theory, and has been teaching at various schools for the past 3-4 years. His wife took a judicial clerkship in the twinned city, and the two left Nashville (but not, as you would assume from the music, their dog, their job or their one true love) to brave the great white north. If Justin Morneau is any indication of what happens there, each of my friends will contribute solidly to their professions, winning a few awards for their performance, but routinely getting overshadowed by flashier (though sometimes less steady) compatriots and competitors. People will ask me how they are doing, and I will confidently answer, “Well, quite well;” I won’t know exactly how well, or what constitutes “well,” but I know it will be so.
When Morneau lumbered down the line and slid in ahead of the tag to end the 2008 All-Star game just short of the J.D. Drew-David Wright pitching matchup (TO DECIDE HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE IN THE WORLD SERIES!!! THE ALL-STAR GAME ON FOX!!!), it finished up a pretty successful 31 hours for the Twin first baseman. Of course, one week later, he was back to semi-obscurity, a footnote twice over. Drew was the game’s MVP (deservedly) and Josh Hamilton (doubly so) was the story of the Home Run Derby, as well as the Break as a whole.
Morneau is not a great player, not even in the discussion of the top ten or fifteen best position players in the league. Maybe not even top 5 at his own position, depending on how you classify DHs. Still, he produces. One could go to battle with a team of Morneaus and feel pretty confident. Of course, they would have to be different sizes and have varying different skill sets and overcome the Canadian aversion to combat, but you get the point. His average line is something in the arena of .290/.360/.510, with some upshot from there over the next few years. That’s a very useful piece to have, especially if the package comes with a smile and a demurring personality. You don’t build around it (is there a first baseman other than Pujols that a team would build around?), but you also don’t worry about it.
I started this piece with the idea of writing about how unlucky and overshadowed Morneau has been. He was the MVP in 2006, a year in which he did not even make the All-Star game, because his second half explosion catapulted the Twins to the playoffs. Still, all the talk was about how God Derek Jeter had been denied his rightful honor. Or whether David Ortiz’s superior offensive season should have been enough to overcome his team’s third place finish and the DH stigma.
On his own team, Morneau has been overshadowed, at various times, by his fellow M&M boy and two absolutely filthy lefties. Mauer gets old scouts and young statters alike hot under the collar, while Santana dominated the league for years and Liriano was no small part of that 2006 surge. Yet, Santana is gone, Mauer has played enough to qualify for the batting title exactly once (although he also managed to win it that year), and Liriano is currently dominating AAA batters after Tommy John surgery and an aborted attempt at an early comeback. Morneau played 157 games each of the last two seasons, and is on pace for more than that this year. He is, as James Earl Jones would say in his perfectly grave voice, “the one constant through the years.”
His All-Star experience was nearly identical. Hamilton set the stadium and the country ablaze with a 32 dinger binge in the first round of the Home Run Derby and a story that everyone really wants to believe in.* Morneau hit 8. In the pointless second round, Hamilton took a few swings to stay warm, swatting 4 more homeruns before sitting and waiting for the final. Morneau hit 9, giving him less than half of Hamilton’s total in 150% of the outs, but a spot in the final anyway. With both men tired (Hamilton likely from 50+ swings, Morneau likely from sitting around for four hours), the final was an unspectacular 5-3 win for Morneau. Everyone in the stadium seemed disappointed (hell, even Morneau admitted that Hamilton should have won), and the obligatory trophy presentation was marked by not one, but TWO separate mispronunciations of Morneau’s very easily pronounced name.
The next night saw Morneau go 2-4 with a double and 2 runs scored. One of those runs was scored on Drew’s seventh-inning two-run shot, ensuring that Morneau’s contribution to the win would be overlooked once again. And so it goes.
The more I look into him, though, I think that maybe everything balances out. Hundreds of major leaguers would give most anything to achieve to Morneau’s level, recognized or not. And maybe he didn’t deserve the MVP in 2006, and maybe this year’s totals are inflated by a somewhat inexplicable rate of batters in scoring position.** Lots of maybes, and maybe it’s better not to consider a guy making millions of dollars underrated or underappreciated. The terms themselves are unclear…after all, Morneau did win the 2006 MVP award, voted to victory by baseball writers who apparently appreciated his efforts just fine, thanks. His name is on the books, which will likely live far longer than the arguments that it is there undeservedly. Especially if the Twins keep winning against most odds, and the record book reads Morneau, Rodriguez, Morneau.
There are many worse players who will make more money, get more national recognition and, as such, be remembered “better” than Morneau. There will also be a fair amount of better players who will never even sniff an MVP award and generally miss out on history’s embrace. It’s a sliding scale that’s the same in nearly every profession. There are worse places to be than where Morneau is, and I’m pretty sure my friends in Minneapolis would gladly take the respective spot on their profession’s scale. So , even after all of the statistical analysis in the world, and with all the soft capital stuff like personality and awards-voting/awards-decrying, the best I can do with Morneau is that he is doing well, quite well. I’m not exactly sure how well, but I am sure that he is doing well.
* The story is great, but it quickly became THE story, and one unbalanced by a second side. Yes, Hamilton has come a long way in his quest to finally reach his immense potential, and good for him. But he also spent a few years destroying himself, his talent and everyone around him. There are quite a few examples of players with half of Hamilton’s natural abilities who have made All-Star teams through hard work and abstention from vices, or players with his level of talent who simply were not able to beat back the demons as successfully as he seems to have. Those stories are as important, if not more so. As the narrative currently exists, however, I feel like I should be ashamed to even have included the word “binge” in the referenced sentence.
** Seriously, I have almost no explanation how the cleanup hitter for a team that routinely sends up Out Machines like Carlos Gomez and Nick Punto ahead of him leads the league in those kind of chances. Morneau has come up 260 times with guys on base, first in the league. In those trips, there have been 350 guys on base, first in the AL until Big Tex crossed over, and third overall. I guess Casilla has been better than I knew (although that seems to be done for the season) and Mauer is really, really good at getting on base, but the Twins leadoff hitters are getting on 28.5% of the time…that’s worse than the BATTING AVERAGES of most leadoff hitters in the league. Crazy.