NEWSLETTER
Anyone else remember the weird, probably just hope-induced speculation out of Minnesota earlier this year that Carlos Correa was so happy with the Twins that he might not opt out of his contract? A contract that had just two years and $70 million remaining on it?
It was always silly, but it definitely got squashed when Correa compared himself to a high-priced item at the Dior store that the Twins will have to come up and check on the price if they want to keep him.
And now you can say it’s actually been reported that Correa is saying he will opt out once he’s eligible to do so after the World Series:
The entire reason Correa signed a three-year deal with the Twins with an opt-out after each of the first two years was so that he could hit free agency again soon, as long as he was healthy, and do so without having draft pick compensation attached.
He stayed healthy this year. He produced reasonably well. He’s 28. So, yes, he’s opting out.
The Chicago Cubs will be in the market for his services, and there were already reported concerns out of Minnesota that the Cubs could be the favorite.
For their part, the Twins do want to try to retain Correa, but I don’t know that it sounds like they’ll reach the level necessary to pull it off.
Lengthy thoughts on the subject from Twins President Derek Falvey at MLB.com on where the Twins will be in the bidding process to retain Correa if he does opt out:
“I would say we don’t know exactly where those [big spenders] are going to be, right?Ultimately, we don’t know what they’re going to prioritize or where the investment’s going to go. I think that’s really what I’m getting back to, some of the creative parts of the conversation and what that looks like. Now, a couple of times over the last 12 months, whether it was Buck or Carlos, the way we kind of navigated to find mutually agreeable solutions, it takes partnership for sure.
“It takes an investment on both sides in maybe some of those decisions. I can’t speak to what some of those other markets are going to do through this cycle, but I can tell you that we know Carlos is a really good player, and we know he’s going to have options. Ultimately, we’re going to hopefully be in the middle of that conversation. Where it takes us, I can’t say today ….
“We were very clear with [Correa] and with his representatives at the end of the year that we wanted to have that conversation at the appropriate time. But we also recognize how this business works. There’s an element of trying to know exactly what the options are, what that looks like. He said all the right things in the way we felt about him, and it was all genuine in the way we all navigated it.
“I think he really did enjoy it here. He really liked it here, for sure. He obviously has that opt-out decision to make, and we have some conversations to have internally. What I would say on it is, we’ve already had conversations with Scott [Boras] and with Carlos, some. We’ll continue to have those over the next few weeks. We’ll never go into specifics about what that looks like. But we’ll continue to try and be creative and have conversations with him and see where that takes us.”
I don’t think you can completely rule out the Twins finding a way to retain Correa, but I don’t read optimism into the repeated use of the word “creative.”
Last year, Correa was reportedly looking to land a deal similar to what Corey Seager got from the Rangers at the top of the market (ten years, $325 million), but no such offer ever materialized. There were rumors that the Cubs were aiming to land him on a seven-year deal before the lockout started, and the Tigers reportedly went to ten years and $275 million before signing Javy Báez.
I think it’s fair to assume Correa will once again be looking to approach that ten-year range, and $30 to $35 million AAV range. That’s not to say he’ll find it out there, or that a team (the Cubs?) wouldn’t instead try to entice him on a shorter-term, higher-AAV deal. In either case, though, I don’t see the Twins going to that level.
