Little fanfare, but talks progressing for Beckett, Mauer

So much silence surrounds the talks regarding Twins superstar catcher Joe Mauer that unenlightened outsiders are starting to wonder whether progress is being made. The same goes for star pitcher Josh Beckett and his talks with the Red Sox, who train seven miles down the road.

While little has become public in the case of either Mauer or Beckett, that shouldn’t be taken to mean that neither negotiation is going well. In fact, indications are strong that steady or better progress is being made in both talks. Though nothing is known to be set yet with either player, the likelihood is that both stars are likely to eventually reach deals for contract extensions with their current teams, and that neither will hit the free-agent market next winter.

Although there still appears to be work to be done, the guess here is that the two stars will end up with deals for a quarter of a billion dollars combined, or perhaps slightly more than that. The guess here is that both megadeals will be done in the coming weeks. In the case of Mauer, both sides are said to be willing to work into the season, if necessary, as each trusts the other to keep quiet and Mauer is focused enough to block out negotiation noise while playing or the Twins.

While one Boston person said “we need Beckett,’’ the Red Sox do have two more ace pitchers in Jon Lester and John Lackey. That sort of statement is even more true for the Twins and Mauer, the hometown hero whose stature has grown to the point where he’s much bigger than even Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett ever was, as a Twins employee acknowledged to me on Thursday.

Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/jon_heyman/03/19/mauer.beckett/index.html#ixzz0igSrCaJM

Boras mumbles something somewhere about how wrong it is that Heyman dare to mention people who are not clients of his.