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The Minnesota Twins are trading Carlos Correa back to the Houston Astros, according to multiple reports. The deal will involve, principally, the cash-strapped Minnesota front office getting out from under most of the contract to which they re-signed Correa after his star-crossed free agency in the winter of 2022-23. Brian McTaggart of MLB.com had the news first.
Correa is in the third of six guaranteed years on the complicated, team-friendly deal the Twins struck with him in January 2023. He’s making $36 million this year, which means there’s $12 million left for 2025 alone. After that, though, his pay gradually decreases. He’ll earn $31.5 million in 2026, $30.5 million in 2027 and $30 million in 2028, all guaranteed—then, there are four club options, with the value stepping downward in $5-million increments each year. Those options can vest based on playing time, but the Astros can manage his playing time in whichever of those seasons they’d like.
This trade is, effectively, a salary dump—and, as such, a sad and embittering end to a once-promising Twins tenure for a player who joined the team when he was on a Hall of Fame career trajectory. Plantar fasciitis and other injuries have eroded his skills and curtailed his production, but as much as anything, this divorce became necessary because Correa’s deal was struck by a team anticipating a steadily increasing payroll, which then had the rug pulled out from under it by an ownership group now running for the door.
Correa, for his part, has done whatever he could to foster a winning atmosphere, and will continue to do so as he returns to the organization that took him first overall in 2012. He's sliding to third base for the Astros.
The full extent of the deal is still far from clear, but while the Twins are eating a portion of the nine-figure sum still owed to Correa, they've offloaded the lion's share of it.
There will be a prospect coming back to the Twins. That's not really a surprise. It's unlikely to be an especially high-echelon talent, though—and that leaves more questions to answer, too.
As it turns out, though, "prospect" is rather a strong word. The hurler the team will receive is Matt Mikulski, a 26-year-old organizational arm who had been pitching at High A in the Houston system. Meanwhile, according to multiple reports, the Twins will eat $33 million of the remaining money owed to Correa, so they're getting off the hook for about twice that much.
In theory, the upside of a trade like this is to open space for young players and to free up money to make it easier to retain up-and-coming pieces who look like the foundations of a new core. In practice, at this moment, it looks as though the benefits of this deal redound mostly to the Pohlad family. Reinvestment of the money saved seems unlikely, in the short term, and the team certainly didn't acquire an impactful player to balance the one they're losing. On the other hand, Correa's age and recent performance remind us that the uglier half of this contract is likely ahead, not behind. The greatest source of frustration, perhaps, is that the situation arose where this measure was even considered. Once it did, making this trade was logical.
Most baseball fans just don't follow the game for the logic of it.
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