In an amazing move, the twins have agreed to sign the best free agent on the market, Shortstop Carlos Correareports by Mark Berman from Fox 26 in Houston (Twitter link). Instead of the massive, long-term deal Correa was looking for, he will instead sign a three-year, $105.3 million contract with unsubscribe clauses after the first and second seasons of the contract. Jeff Bassan from ESPN Add The contract pays $35.1 million equally distributed annually. Korea is represented by Boras Corporation.
The Twins give Correa the second highest average annual value of any player in MLB history, trailing the AAV of just $36 million in Mike TroutFor a decade, his $360 million contract with the Angels was extended and he narrowly topped AAV’s $35 million contract Anthony RendonFor seven years with the angels. This move also means the #1 and #2 picks from the 2012 draft, Korea and Byron BuxtonThey will now be teammates for at least the 2022 season.
When shedding the remainder of Josh DonaldsonA contract in trade with the Yankees, Minnesota was immediately linked to the Shortstop Free Agent Program Trevor’s story. Instead, more than $40 million saved in that Donaldson deal will be reallocated to Correa, whose guarantee is just $105.3 million. Joe Mawr For the biggest franchise in the history of twins. Correa rejected a qualifying bid from the Astros at the end of the season, meaning the Twins, the revenue-sharing recipient, would lose their third-highest pick in this year’s draft in order to sign him. This would be their pick in Round B of the Competitive Libra, which is supposed to fall in the mid-1960s. In the meantime, the Astros will receive a compensating selection at the end of the Competitive B balance round, which usually falls in the early 1970s.
Opt-out of the deal provides Korea the ultimate insurance network; If he remains healthy in 2022 and produces anywhere near his levels in 2021 or 2019, he will almost certainly re-enter the market in search of something along the lines of the ten-year deal he originally sought. If he sustains a notable injury or suffers an unexpected dip at the plate, he will have another $35.1 million salary awaiting him in 2023 with the same chance of withdrawing in the 2023-24 season.
The 27-year-old Correa, a career .277/ .356/ .481 hitter who cut .279/ .366/ .485 with 26 Homers in 640 games last season, will be a focal point in the Twins lineup that is also anchored by Buxton and 2nd primary Jorge Polanco. He’s been an average hitter or better in every season of his Big League career, save for the short 2020 campaign, and he’s been linked with 20 or more runs in five of his six full seasons at the MLB level. Correa has 10.8% and 20.5% of his board appearances since debuting as a 20-year-old rookie, including career top marks with 11.7% and 18.1% respectively last season.
As with any Astro for long, Correa comes with a relatively tarnished reputation stemming from the 2017 Houston signal-stealing scandal, but George Springer demonstrated last winter that the market will continue to pay premium prices to these players, provided they remain productive in subsequent years. Correa serves only as further evidence of this fact. And just as Springer was welcomed by Toronto fans, Korea is sure to be well received in Minnesota as long as he produces a uniform for the twins.
Like Buxton, Correa has had some durability issues, only twice reaching 500 appearances in his career. However, he played 148 games this past season and 58 of the 60 during the short 2020 season. Correa had briefly resided on the Covid-19 list during the summer of 2021, but had not been on the list since suffering a rib fracture in June 2019. Another notable injury he sustained in his career, a torn thumb ligament, came in 2017 and had no significant lasting effects.
Correa only deepens Minnesota’s deep lineup in talent but also lacks consistency. Whoever Miguel SanoAnd the Max Kepler And the Gary Sanchez They’ve had 30 seasons in the past, but they’ve fallen back and flowed with rollercoaster shows on the board in recent years. third man base Jiu Orchilawho was acquired alongside Sanchez in the Donaldson deal, will also look for a rebound to 2019-20 levels (.310/.358/.523) after playing into health issues in 2021.
Meanwhile, former senior potential customers Alex Kirillov And the Trevor Larnach They have great offensive ceilings but played through injuries in their first full appearance in 2021. Kirillov, in particular, played through a torn wrist tendon before undergoing surgery at the end of the season. highest probability Jose Mirandawho posted video game numbers between Double-A and Triple-A last season (.344/.401/.572), is expected to make his debut in 2022 and could see time at third base and/or designated hitter.
All this means is that there are massive lineups in Minnesota, although it will take a few things to break it right. On the defensive side of things, Correa gives the twins a pair of Platinum Glove winners, joining Buxton in that regard. With top defenders like Kepler and Orcella and young catcher Ryan Jeffers also occupying key points on the Diamond, the Twins should have a strong defensive squad overall. The twins already ranked 12th in the main positions in both the defending rounds saved and above average in 2021, and Korea should cement both marks.
The bigger questions, however, center around the team’s mixture that begins with rotation. after charging Jose Perios To Blue Jays before the 2021 trade deadline and watch your good fellow you were maid Soon after undergoing Tommy John’s surgery, the twins went into winter needing at least three seasoned freshmen to pair up with the little ones. Joe Ryan And the Billy Uber. They have not yet reached this goal. acquisition Sony Gray of the Reds gave them one notable upgrade, throwing the dice on a Dylan Bundy Recoil before closing was a reasonable enough movement in a vacuum. However, the twins are out of work in the early part of the season and now face a still-non-existent rotation and a largely chosen free agent market.
Twins have been linked to beginners in athletics Shawn Mind And the Frankie MontasIf that fails, however, baseball chief operating officer Derek Falvey and general manager Thad Levine will need to look at some creative and off-the-court options — especially now that they’ve done it all in the 2022 season with this Correa deal. Minnesota has a number of possibilities for pitching on the edge of the major tournaments, but Korea is a clear winning move now that requires extra fortification in both the spin and the bull.
It’s not clear just how much latitude Falvey and Levine will have to further boost payroll which, with the addition of Correa, now stands at $128.5 million — within a few million dollars of the franchise registry area. The front office has repeatedly spoken out about supporting the property to boost payroll as needed in the past, however, and the shocking addition of Korea seems to support the idea that there is more room to take the team’s spending levels to new heights, at least in the next phase. Few seasons.
Correa’s deal is great on a number of levels, not least because it’s the first time in recent memory that the market’s #1 free agent consensus has centered on a short-term deal with the potential for an early return to the market. Entering the season, the common consensus was that rivals to the Yankees and Korea’s new team, the Tigers, would be the primary bidders for his services. The Yankees didn’t opt out of the market for fully developed short stops (despite the obvious need), but in essence they paved the way for the Twins to make this deal when they took over the rest of Donaldson’s contract. Meanwhile, the Tiger family offered Korea a 10-year, $275 million deal with three opt-out clauses — although it’s presumably not as early in the contract as the offer Correa eventually settled on.
Risk-averse detractors will see Korea swoop in on the bigger guarantee, but with a big season, Korea will once again enter the market in search of a $300M+ deal and having already earned $35.1M in 2022. If he even reaches $240 million in a multi-year deal next winter, before his 28-year season, or a $205 million+ deal after he opted out in 2023, he would have gone out on the whole maneuver.
Even if Correa unexpectedly plays all three seasons in Minnesota in this deal, he’ll return to the open market before a 30-year-old season and need to spell out what could be $170 million for the highest-reported Detroit show. It’s clear that Correa will likely suffer, get injured or never reach the same earnings cap, but he’s known to be a very confident player – a mindset that is confirmed by taking on a deal of this nature.
The current Astros offered Correa five years totaling $160 million before closing, and earlier in the week she was said to be preparing a new show for her longtime star. It’s not yet clear what Houston ultimately offered, but their initial offer didn’t include any cancellation provisions. If the new offer followed the same in this regard, it was likely that Correa simply felt that in order to accept a shorter-term deal than the ten-year agreement he had initially sought, he would need a chance to take another potion for free-agent apple sooner rather than later.
Korea’s future trips to the market depend on how the 2022 and possibly 2023 seasons end, but no matter when he returns to free agency, he will do so with some merit. First, it won’t be one of the five high-quality pit stops on the market, as it was this year. korea mix, story, Cory SeegerAnd the Marcus Simin And the Javier Baez It is considered to be perhaps the largest collection of short free proxy stops in history. The talented nature of that group always created the possibility of a game of musical chairs that left one without the contract he sought, but few would have expected Correa to take a short-term deal.
If Korea comes back to the market next winter, he’ll do it side by side Tria TurnerAnd the Dansby Swanson and maybe Xander Bogarts, who can withdraw from the last three years of his contract and the sum of $60 million. However, Bogart’s defensive shortcomings have been increasingly brought under the microscope in recent years, and Swanson has never performed at the level of Korea either offensively or defensively. Turner and Korea certainly have the potential to be considered 1-A and 1-B in next year’s market, but age is on Korea’s side; He is younger than Turner by more than a year. Furthermore, since Korea received a qualifying bid this winter, he is now permanently ineligible for a second bid. The qualifying bid system may be scrapped entirely — this depends on negotiations surrounding an international draft — but Correa is forever free from draft selection compensation, regardless.
Another element of the contract to consider is the agency component in it. Correa turned heads by appointing Hollywood talent agency William Morris Endeavor to represent him in September 2019. WME represented him halfway through this MLB off-season shutdown, but Correa hired The Boras to represent him on January 18. The motive for the switch, but the change in representation meant that Correa’s former clients could have sued the committee from his final contract. When Korea returns to the market, whether it is after 2022, after 2023 or after 2024, his new representation will rule the entire committee.
From a pure baseball perspective, the decade is a win for Korea and the Twins. Correa can claim a token salary record – the largest annual value for a player – and receive a huge annual salary while still retaining the ability to return to free agency beforehand in his 28, 29 or 30 season.
Meanwhile, the twins have made their biggest promotion available on the market, bringing them back into the conversation in the American Central League. They wouldn’t be considered favorites without some extra throwing assistance, but Correa nonetheless provides a drastic improvement on both sides of the ball. The amount of promotional upgrades the twins have up their sleeves will determine their fate in 2022, but if their apocalyptic deal with Korea is any indication, they are far from finished improving this list.
