Joe Mauer, who has won three batting titles with the Minnesota Twins, started this season by hitting .225 in April. In May, Mauer hit .346. Included were six doubles and three home runs.
In Friday night’s 11-5 defeat of the Angels in Anaheim, Calif., Mauer, who is a .308 lifetime hitter, had four more hits,
including his fourth home run. He is now hitting .294.
“I’ve had a good run,” Mauer said last week. “It’s kind of funny because I started off the season probably the best that I can remember feeling-wise — I hit the ball, squared it up with nothing much to show for it. Now they’re starting to fall. Now the results are there.”
Mauer is 34 now. The last time he batted .300 was in 2013, which was his sixth all-star season, when he hit .324. The way he’s swinging now, it looks like he could be heading to .300 again.
Is .300 a goal?
“Just trying to have good at-bats and do what the situation calls for is No. 1,” Mauer said. “Obviously, everybody in
this (clubhouse) would like to hit .300.”
Mauer is in his 14th major league season. He has this season and next on an eight-year, $184 million contract.
Mauer’s manager, Paul Molitor, also from St. Paul, was 41 years old during his final season (1998) of a Hall of Fame career. The season before for the Twins, Molitor hit .305 in 135 games at age 40.
Does Mauer think about playing after his current contract is up?
“Not really, but I know it’s starting to get towards the end there,” he said. “It goes fast. When it comes, I’ll have to make a decision — I know that. But right now, I’m having fun playing.
“We were saying the other day that I can’t believe this is my 14th year already. It’s gone by quick.”
Kyle Gibson (2-4), who beat the Angels on Friday night, might finally be returning to his potential. He has struggled emotionally.
“That’s been the big adjustment for me,” said Gibson, 29, who three years ago won 13 games for a club that won just 70 all season. “There was some physical things that I’ve worked on and tried to correct with my delivery and stuff, but mostly it was just mentally and my mentality toward what I was doing.
“I know that’s probably a little different for fans, but if you just compare it to their jobs as well … I was taking my job and making it so important that I just couldn’t sustain it. Every pitch, every batter, I was putting so much importance on it that what I was doing was defining my identity on the field and defining what I was thinking about myself.
“We’re all going to go through bad stretches, and for me, the first three starts (this season) impacted the next three before I got sent down (to Class AAA Rochester) because of the struggle, and you should never let one, or even three starts, define who you are.”
So at Rochester, Gibson had a good chat with Twins psychologist Rick Aberman.
“It was about the basic thoughts of what do I ‘need’ and what do I ‘want,’ ” Gibson said. “Almost before every pitch, I was telling myself what I ‘needed’ to do. And Dr. Aberman explained, in all reality, you don’t ‘need’ to do anything on the baseball field.
“You ‘want’ to do everything. And when you want to do things, you make the choice to do it. But when you ‘need’ to do things, you have no choice over it — you just do it or you fail. It really made a lot of sense to me.”
Sports, for sure, can be mentally taxing, especially in the major leagues.
“So now I’m trying to make sure I’m shifting my mentality and understanding that every pitch I throw, I’m throwing because I ‘want’ to, where I want. When you fail at something you want to do, the impact on your identity and on life is not nearly as big as if you fail at something that in your mind you ‘needed’ to do.
“When you’re going through tough times, it’s not always just because your slider isn’t good or because your fastball command isn’t good — it could start with something even deeper than that.
“I think what I was finding is that my mentality pre-pitch was helping me fail — everything was snowballing because of the importance I was putting on each pitch. And before you know it, you’ll have four bad pitches in a row and you get yourself in a jam. Well, you’re now thinking about the previous four pitches, plus trying to do something down the road, and you just can’t do it.”
Gibson was getting plenty of advice.
“Everybody the whole time was saying ‘just be you — you’ve had success here, and just be Kyle Gibson,’ ” he said. “Well, my idea of Kyle Gibson was changing because of how my mentality was toward each pitch.”
Gibson’s physical stuff on the mound is too good for him not to be a winning pitcher.
“That’s what everybody was telling me,” he said. “And I was getting to the point that I knew that, but I don’t know that I was believing it because of where my mentality was. The thought that I was having about myself was being driven by six (mostly ineffective) starts instead of looking at the times that I’ve had extended success and realizing I’ve done this before. I was letting six starts kind of overshadow everything, and that’s the problem.”
The Twins were among 10 teams scouting Burnsville senior Sam Carlson’s shutout (2-0) of Park of Cottage Grove on Friday night in Dundas. Whether Carlson will be a first-round pick in next week’s major league draft will depend on what scouts watched him on what days he pitched. In other words, it’s a tossup.
Carlson has a brother, sophomore pitcher, Max, who also is being scouted by major league teams.
Among those attending the celebration of life of former Twins equipment manager Jimmy Wiesner at Mancini’s last week were Tom Kelly, Kent Hrbek, Tim Laudner, Jim Rantz, Tom Brunansky, Jerry Bell, Tony Oliva, Dennis Ryan, Mark McKenzie, Billy Robertson and Dennis Denning.
Deephaven’s Tim Herron, who won the PGA Tour’s Colonial tournament in 2006, was hitting balls on the practice range at last week’s Colonial in Fort Worth, Texas, when he was approached by a fellow who asked him if he’d like to try one of Ben Hogan’s old persimmon wood drivers.
“I said sure, fine,” Herron said. “Holy God! Man, do they look small! I’d love to see Bubba (Watson) and these guys try to wail with them. I hit ‘em real low — line drives. The golf ball has changed so much that you can’t create enough spin to get the ball up in the air with his clubs.”
The legendary Hogan, who died nearly 20 years ago, won four U.S. Opens and two Masters tournaments using a wood driver and balata balls.
Herron, 47, a four-time winner on the PGA Tour, is playing on tour exemptions until he tries to qualify for the Champions Tour when he turns 50.
He said hitting Hogan’s driver felt “really strange. It was different because it had a steel shaft and the ball came off really low, kind of squirrely off to the right, like a knuckleball. It was probably only flying about 220 (yards). It was funny.”
Herron’s regular drives with his new Ping 460cc graphite state-of-art driver fly about 270 yards.
“Now, the heads are so big you don’t really think about it,” Herron said.
That was Twins manager Paul Molitor, 60, walking 18 holes at tough Hazeltine National, site of last year’s Ryder Cup, during his team’s recent off-day and shooting in the low 80s.
The Twins have gone from 66-to-1 odds last month to win the World Series to 40-to-1, according to Bovada-Las Vegas, and 6-to-1 to win the AL Central Division.
If the Cleveland Cavaliers can beat Golden State in the NBA Finals, Tyronn Lue would become only the second coach in NBA history to win a championship in his first two seasons. The only other coach is Johnny Kundla with the Minneapolis Lakers (1949-1950). Kundla, who resides in northeast Minneapolis, turns 101 on July 3.
Apple Valley junior basketball star Tre Jones is doing well after a bad ankle sprain with his Howard Pulley AAU team in Los Angeles last week. Jones’ current college considerations, in no order of preference: Duke, Arizona, UCLA, Minnesota, Oregon, Baylor and Butler.
Going into Saturday’s games, the Twins have the best road record based on percentage (16-5, .762) in the major leagues, even better than Houston’s 19-6, .760.
St. Thomas Academy’s new Athletic Hall of Fame members: Tom Cross, Tim McManus, Joe Slater, John Gross, John O’Connell, Dennis Smith, Tim McGough, Matthew Schnobrich and Kip Winden.
Former St. Paul Academy and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) hockey star Delaney Middlebrook, who overcame a life threatening heart condition that required surgery at Mayo Clinic her senior year at SPA, has helped her Djurgarden team win the Gold Medal in the Swedish Women’s Hockey Championship and been elected among charter members of the Minneapolis Hockey Hall of Fame that includes Mike Ramsey, Reed Larson, Tom Chorske and Joe Dziedzic.
Ex-Twin Denard Span on Friday against Philadelphia had five hits for San Francisco, which hosts the Twins next weekend. Span is hitting .260. Eduardo Nunez, the former Twins all-star infielder traded to the Giants last year for pitcher Adalberto Mejia, is hitting .288 for San Francisco.
Former Gophers hockey captain and chairman of Minnesota Board of Regents Dave Metzen will receive the University’s highest honor, the Outstanding Achievement Award, on June 19 at the president’s Eastcliff residence.
Big Ten men’s basketball coach of the year Richard Pitino speaks Thursday at a Dunkers club breakfast at the Minneapolis Club. Vikings coach Mike Zimmer speaks at a Dunkers breakfast on June 16 at the Minneapolis Club.
Defending 3M Championship winner Joe Durant will speak at the TPC course in Blaine on June 19.
Don’t print that
Word is Brad Hand, 27, the Chaska High grad who is 1-3 with a 1.69 earned-run average in 27 games for the San Diego Padres, is available for the right deal. The left-hander would seem a perfect fit for the pitching-desperate Twins.
Don’t be surprised if it’s announced on Friday that Hazeltine National in Chaska will host the 2019 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship — one of five majors on the LPGA Tour with a purse that could approach $4 million in two years.
The first-place Twins, 28-23 after Friday night’s victory, say they don’t know whether they will be buyers or sellers by baseball’s trade deadline on July 31.
“The way I look at it, we’re just getting into June, and a lot of teams are still trying to figure out where they are,” Twins
chief executive officer Derek Falvey said. “I talk to a number of general managers, and I think everyone’s kind of in the same stage — let’s see where we are in late June, early July.”
The Twins are still trying to figure out where they are regarding contention.
“I think so,” Falvey said. “Each day and each week is another set of data for us for where our team is, what we need, what fits. Things can go in different directions depending on injuries and otherwise, too. We just want to be thoughtful about staying as open-minded as possible.”
The Twins have early picks in the second round of next week’s major league draft. Expected to be available is outfielder Stuart Fairchild of Wake Forest. Fairchild, who hit two home runs against Miami in last week’s NCAA playoffs, has the same right-handed, short and quick but powerful swing as that of Paul Molitor, the Hall of Fame Twins manager.
It now looks like Vanderbilt right-hander Kyle Wright will be the Twins’ choice with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft on June 12. Wright could be in the major leagues in a year or so if all goes well.
Hill-Murray grad Jake Guentzel, the rookie with the Pittsburgh Penguins and son of Gophers top assistant Mike Guentzel, has a decent chance to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as the NHL’s playoff MVP. Woodbury neighbors recall seeing Guentzel virtually every day during winters skating outdoors at Colby Lake Park.
If the Timberwolves don’t trade down with their No. 7 pick in the June 22 NBA draft, it still looks like they will take 6-11 Jonathan Issac from Florida State or 7-foot Lauri Markkanen from Arizona. But trading down to No. 16 or so, with Chicago, remains a distinct possibility.
It’s still looking like Arizona State could be joining the WCHA for men’s hockey. A 4,000-seat on-campus arena is being planned, but it could be at least a couple of years before the Sun Devils begin play in the league.
P.J. Fleck’s first Gophers football team will play in the Quick Lane Bowl against North Carolina in Detroit, projects the Street and Smith’s publication, which also forecasts that Northwestern will be the Big Ten’s representation in the Holiday Bowl, which last season hosted Minnesota in its 17-12 victory over Washington State in San Diego.
Meanwhile, Rodney Smith of the Gophers is projected as an all-Big Ten second-team running back by Athlonsports.com, which also projects teammate Steven Richardson as a second-team defensive lineman. Minnesota’s Emmit Carpenter is the first-team kicker, teammate Ryan Santoso the second-team punter.
The Timberwolves are 100-to-1 odds to win next season’s NBA championship, the same as the Bulls, Nuggets, Pacers, Lakers, Magic and 76ers, according to BetOnline.ag. The Warriors are 1-to-1.
Overheard
Twins starter Ervin Santana (7-2, 1.75 ERA) on his success: “Everything is working — I’m throwing a lot of strikes, the ball is down, and our offense is good.”