Joe Mauer

Joe Mauer admitted to the Pioneer Press's Brian Murphy this week that he was still suffering from concussion symptoms last season, primarily blurred vision caused by bright light. That affected his daytime stats some last year. Just to be clear, his night time stats weren't all that good either, at least when compared to a younger, healthier Joe Mauer.

Joe will be wearing sunglasses during day games in spring training this year, even though he says the vision problems seem to have cleared up.

As to aging, wear and tear over time, and bad knees? Let's just say the sunglasses won't help much with that. Joe will turn 33 in April. He plans on playing out the remainder of his contract. He's not going to leave all that guaranteed money on the table by retiring early, even though most of us would like to see that.

Joe still had the best on-base percentage for the full-time starters last year, so there is that. Is he worth what the Twins are paying him? I think the Twins could spend that money more wisely IF Joe chose to retire.

But I keep on thinking Nolasco wasn't that good a deal for us either. Sometimes teams waste money hoping they are doing the right thing. My guess is it will be quite a while before the Twins offer anyone a long-term, high end contract like Mauer again. At least I hope they learned from this mistake.