Carlos Correa bet on himself last season when he signed what turned out to be a one-year deal with the Twins.
He was right to want to test the free-agent market again, because the Giants are now betting three times the Arizona Diamondbacks’ entire 2022 payroll that Correa is the man it needs in the middle of its lineup for the next decade-plus.
And the Giants might just be right, too.
Because while Correa wasn’t the Giants’ first choice this offseason, he was a nevertheless outstanding choice.
It’s hard to say if the balance of power shifts in the National League West with Correa’s mega $350 million contract, which will span 13 years. One player can only make so much of a difference.
But Correa is an elite player who should, just now, be entering his prime, and every team could use someone like him. The Giants desperately needed someone like him.
So while adding Correa doesn’t give the Giants an automatic leg up on the Padres and Dodgers, San Francisco now has a fighting chance against those teams now that a player worth 7.2 WAR per 162 games is in black and orange.
What Correa really brings the Giants is three-fold:
First, he’s a bat they can put in the No. 2 or No. 3 hole every single day. Righty or lefty, day or night, rain or shine. Correa might be a shortstop — the one spot on the diamond the Giants actually had sorted with Brandon Crawford — but that middle-of-the-order stalwart was the real position the Giants needed to fill this offseason.
The other thing Correa brings is legitimacy, both amid baseball and in the Bay Area marketplace.
Correa’s signing salvages a Giants offseason that had been embarrassing — even if it was technically productive. After being denied by top-flight free agents, again and again, year after year, signing Correa gives the Giants credibility in the marketplace that they have long sought.
He also gives this organization a cornerstone from which everything else is built — something it has lacked in its two recent seasons without Buster Posey.
He’s the kind of top player other top players want to be around. The Giants desperately needed someone like that.
Of course, that kind of player isn’t cheap. Everyone wants one. As such, Correa just agreed to the largest contract for a shortstop ever.
But given his production and his age, it’s impossible to say that he doesn’t deserve it. He’s a career .279 hitter with a .836 OPS, all while playing a premium position. The Mets, Cubs, Yankees, Dodgers (to a degree), Twins, and Red Sox were all pursuing Correa, and yet he took the Giants’ money. That might sound crass, but he’s the first marquee free agent to do that on a long-term deal since Barry Zito.
The Giants are, of course, hoping this deal works out better than that one.
And while all the money on this contract is guaranteed — such is baseball — and there’s next to no chance that Correa is worth $27 million per year on the tail end of it, this is a great deal for the Giants.
Yes, we all know that 13-year deals are terrible business, but who cares if the Giants technically overpaid? The beauty of being a big-market team is that you can just buy another player down the line to make up for the diminishing returns. Thinking technically ensures you don’t land a player like this, who should dramatically outperform his average annual value for the first half-decade of this deal.
And the Giants, by giving Correa his market value, showed they are a big-market team, not just a mid-major enterprise that went through the motions so it could save face.
With Correa coming West, there is, of course, the question of the glove. My guess is that he will move to third base for this upcoming season (and perhaps beyond, thanks to top prospect Marco Luciano). Crawford’s bat might not be what it was two seasons ago, but his glove is still peerless — even for a Platinum Glove winner like the Giants’ new signing. But whether Correa or Crawford takes the hot corner, the duo will give the Giants baseball’s best defensive left side of the infield. That’s a nice thing to have any season, but this upcoming season, with the shift banned, it might be exceptionally valuable.
There are also the ethical questions stemming from how he cheated with the Houston Astros en route to that team’s first World Series title.
I won’t forget that — nor should you — but I don’t think it’s cause for actual concern now that the Giants are paying for his services. He hit damn well (135 OPS+) without the help of trash cans the last two seasons.
Also, after some reflection that absolutely preceded this signing, I’m not sure the Bay Area should be getting up on too high a horse regarding illegal performance enhancers — be they anabolic or audio.
Health is of legitimate concern — Correa has averaged 113 games per season over the last seven seasons — but the Giants aren’t naive to that. Neither was the rest of baseball. Everyone knew, and yet Correa’s price kept going up. That doesn’t happen for major injury risks in this modern game. I’m willing to think there’s wisdom in the crowd there.
Injuries, trashcans, third base, and all, Correa is the real deal. And the addition of a cornerstone like him puts a nice sheen on everything else the Giants have done this offseason. This team makes so much more sense as a fringe contender with Correa in the fold. Mitch Haniger was a nice pickup when you think of him just ahead of Correa in the lineup. Having a deep, but not particularly top-heavy pitching staff doesn’t seem so bad if you have Correa’s elite defense behind them.
Again, the Giants don’t jump up to becoming World Series or even National League West favorites with the addition of Correa, but with him in San Francisco, the Giants are unquestionably a better team going into 2023 than they were in 2022. A little bit can go a long way in modern baseball, even if that little bit costs a whole lot.
That improvement is what really mattered this offseason. Whether it was Aaron Judge, Trea Turner, Xander Bogaerts, or Correa, the Giants needed to add a big-time player to their team — a perennial All-Star and viable MVP candidate — so the team could take a step forward on the diamond, amid peers in the league, and commercially in the Bay Area.
Correa gives the Giants all of those things.
It’s a deal that needed to be made. It was Tuesday. And so no matter how or when this deal ends, bringing Correa to the Bay will always be justified.
He’ll be solid on the diamond and important off it. That makes him worth every penny to the Giants. All 35 billion of them.
