When the Twins re-signed Carlos Correa in 2023, he was competing in the free agent market with three other marquee shortstops: Trea Turner, Xander Bogaerts, and Dansby Swanson (in that approximate order of hype). It's now been almost two full seasons, and it's natural to wonder how Correa has stacked up against those three peers. The results aren't looking spectacular for the Twins front office.

We can use wins above replacement (WAR)--specifically, the Fangraphs variety, abbreviated as fWAR--as a quick measure of the players' overall performance, including batting, fielding, and base-running. It's important to note that WAR is a "counting stat," meaning that the player accumulates it throughout the season, so if he's injured, he'll tend to have less of it. And if we want to quantify how the player performed without thinking about how much time he was on the field, we can use WAR/162, which is how many WAR the player would have accumulated in a season if he had been on-field for all 162 games and performed at the same level as he did in the games he actually played. Here's how the four players stack up:

In total WAR, Correa ranks last on the list. Not coincidentally, he's been on the field far less than the other three players. If we want to cut him some slack for his injuries, he has accumulated WAR at a higher rate, when healthy, than Bogaerts, but still at a lower rate than Swanson or Turner. Swanson has the most total WAR and games played, and Turner has the highest WAR/162.

From a "Moneyball" perspective, though, are the Twins getting good value for their money? Let's look at this in terms of dollars paid per WAR. And let's do it in two different formats: $/WAR, which is the dollars already paid to the player in 2023 and 2024* divided by the number of WAR, and $/WAR (total committed), looking at the total value of the contract over its entire span, divided by the number of WAR the player has accumulated.

By $/WAR, the Twins are paying a lot for their shortstop WAR. Correa's WAR are costing almost twice as much as Swanson's, and with similar gaps to Turner and Bogaerts.

If there's one stat here that's somewhat forgiving to the Twins, it's $/WAR (total committed). Correa signed a shorter contract with less total value than Turner's or Bogaert's 11-year mega-deals. The Phillies and Padres are on the hook for a full slate of late-30's years when those two players are unlikely to be that good, while the Twins can be out of the Carlos Correa business, if they so choose, by the time he's 34. So if you just look at big free agent contracts as a lump sum of money that buys out the player's (hopefully) prime years, just paid out over several seasons, then the Twins are doing relatively OK.

Still, that doesn't change the basic message that Correa hasn't been as good as two of his premiere shortstop peers, and hasn't been on the field enough to be as good as a third. Correa's performance was down in 2023. In 2024, it's been very good on a per-game basis, but he has missed a big chunk of the season. A huge post-season this year would go a long way toward making up for the regular season disappointment this year. Beyond this year, he still has four years left on his contract - we can hope his heels feel better and he puts the 2024 performance and the 2023 time-on-field together in 2025-2028.

* For simplicity, not accounting for deferred and up-front money, just acting as if the player gets paid the same amount each year of his contract.