It’s like Carlos Correa was building a personal audition tape during these playoffs, showing the big picture of his talents. There is Correa hitting the straights in an aggressive, easy way, as if he were squashing a slow fly with a rolled magazine. There’s Correa skillfully fielding a ground ball and confidently starting a double play, over and over again. There is Correa, putting his feet up and waiting for a beat to show off his arm and make a throw at first. There is Correa going to the mound to seat a teammate, checking the “leadership” box. Correa ignores pitches from the edges of the strike zone, with apparent plate discipline in a month in which some players lose control.
The timing for Correa couldn’t be better, because as the last surviving teams advance into the final two rounds of the postseason, evaluators with other teams are currently in meetings to discuss potential acquisition targets and the position that attracts the most. attention. he’s shortstop, given the remarkable class of free agents there that are about to be available.
Contracts paid to the quintet of Corey seager, Marcus semien, Trevor story, Javier Baez and Correa may approach a billion dollars, and the aggressiveness of the bidders likely depends to some degree on how quickly Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association agree on the next collective bargaining agreement. (Francisco Lindor would have been part of this group of agents, but he signed with the Mets for $ 341 million last spring.)
In a poll conducted in recent days, 11 evaluators ranked these five elite shortstop from No. 1 to No. 5, including Semien, who switched to second base this year when he joined the Blue Jays after playing shortstop. with Oakland for years. If you move out of Toronto after a year, the general presumption is that you can return to shortstop. The evaluator voting results were applied in a simple point system – five points when ranking first out of the five shortstop, four points for second place ranking, etc., and you’ll see the results below.
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