Mark Berman: Astros offering Carlos Correa a 5 year/160 million dollar contract

The recent noise on the Astros aggressive pursuit of Marte was probably leaked by Astros to see if Correa will hurry up already and decide on whether he wants a 6-7 year deal from Houston. If things develop slowly with Correa and Marte is ready to commit, I could see the Astros telling Correa x is our best offer and if that doesn’t work, we are going to sign Marte.

I would like Correa back. I really want the Correa and Altuve statues outside of MMP. But objectively, Marte plus Diaz/Peña is probably better than Chaz/Siri plus Correa. Peña is a different caliber prospect than Chaz and siri, and could create a lineup that runs 8 deep.

 

I haven't admittedly looked at payroll overall - but we're not jamming $60MM into a $30MM hole. They were prepared to pay both players $37MM to return. They had to at least think there was a decent chance JV could accept the QO and there was no indication that would preclude a run at Correa.

 

I think the squad they ran out last year, with a healthy JV and McCullers, is capable of winning it all. Those two starters are a bigger difference than the loss of two relievers in Yimi and Graveman. Not to say that the team couldn't also try to retain both, go over the cap, or otherwise fill in the pen. And there are always trades.

I think that Correa moves the needle more than Marte or some relief pitching acquisitions, if the question is how to spend $30m.

 

In principal I agree with you. However, it is easy to see why people want more pitching after having our starters put up 2 inning appearances so many times in the playoffs. It's an emotional reaction especially after losing a World Series.

The offense was a big problem in the World Series. Too many guys totally disappeared in the lineup. Currently the Astros have 7 legit big league starters. If they want to package one of them with some prospects to land another better player whether it is a pitcher or a positional player that would be fine by me.

 

I would hope most smart/forward thinking franchises don’t overreact or make off season decisions based solely on 5 or 7 (or 16) game sample sizes.

Framber-Garcia-Urquiddy combine to make $2 million dollars next year. It’s also safe to presume each hasn’t hit their peak yet.

they do have the most trade value, sure… but they also have upside at an amazingly cheap value for the next 3 years.

 

Really really really well said. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills with people not getting that. If you wanted to take it even further you could make the contract more beneficial to the competitive window by making it a 12 or 13 year deal (age 40) and lowering the AAV. If Carlos would go for 10/300 I bet he’d go for 13/325 or something if you told him that meant an extra piece every year. Maximize competitive window. Make his out years even less painful while rebuilding/reloading.

 

And they can probably trade Brantley fairly easily too if they want to go there. They can get off of $35,000,000 in salary fairly easily (cost of maybe two fringe top 10-15 type prospects or a Chaz McCormick (or maybe just Siri) type in addition to the aforementioned 44,000,000 from reduction to JV, Greinke gone and Carlos 12 million.
If they don’t bring him correa back it’s because they didn’t want to, not because they couldn’t. Plain and simple. $80,000,000 to spend to fill 3 holes basically- SS, left field and CF.
Correa 13/325
Bryant 7/175
Marte- 4/85.
Graveman- 3/21.
That’s every single hole filled. trade Brantley for nothing (might have to add a slight sweetener
Trade Odo for nothing.
Trade Baez and a sweetener for nothing.
DFA Diaz. Sweeteners would be SIRI, maybe McCormick. Maybe a top 15 type prospect. Done.
not a single hole in the lineup. Peña is your utility guy. Taylor Jones is your backup at LF and 1B. Meyers is your 4th OF when he gets healthy. you don’t have a single hole in your lineup until 2024 (when Yuli leaves next year Bryant becomes your 1B and your OF is Meyers, Marte, Tucker. Lee becomes your primary catcher in 2023. Hope Brown or Whitley pop to replace JV

 

Hinch back to Houston confirmed.

 

Your point that Framber, Garcia, and Urquidy are a terrific value next season is correct, but $2 million is not accurate. Framber will be entering arbitration and his estimated salary is around 3.2 million according to fangraphs. So those 3 pitchers will cost around 4.2-4.5 million total. That is still excellent value but not 2 million.

I want another hitter to offset the loss if Correa is leaving. I would like an additional free agent signing AND a trade.

 

True...but you have to account for raises to McCullers, Pressly, Maldonado, Castro, James, Valdez, Stanek, Maton, and Montero. Then with Odorizzi his AAV is 8 million but he has incentives that could push his salary to 14.75 million. If Odorizzi only makes 8 million next year he will have been an absolute disaster on the mound or injured A LOT. So if he is on the roster the Astros have to keep the extra 6.75 million in space available for those incentives. Plus, they don't even know what the luxury tax levels are going to be right now anyway....

 

I think the only raises many on here are paying attention to are the ones in their pants for Mrs Upton when JV was re-signed.

 

It’s pretty far-fetched to imagine Click using this offseason to undo 3 of his biggest free agent deals as a GM.

 

Correa is wearing a green hat that mean he's definitely signing with the Oakland/ Las Vegas A's...

 

Another problem that doesn’t get talked about enough is only two home runs the entire series-both by the same player. A constant theme of last year’s postseason was the team that outhomered the other had a rediculously good record.

 

If Baez and Odorizzi are required to be salary dumps to get under a tax threshold… or some team actually ends up offering something of value… I don’t see why there should be any hesitation. Yes, they both were Click acquisitions… but there’s not a ton of upside there and it wasn’t as if they were major difference makers throughout the season (although I questioned that they could have used Jake better in the playoffs).

Also Odorizzi wasn’t simply some drawn out courtship… he was Framber insurance.

 

Never lose that ability to account for every single $1 the Astros are spending…

The point is, they should not trade any of those pitchers while they’re cheap AF with upside.

 

With JV signed paying Correa any more than the offer already on the table leaves too little money to deal with the teams current obligations let alone anything that comes up in the future.

 

Depends on your definition of upside, but Odorizzi has a 4 win season on his resume and Baez has a 1.4 win season on his, both of which are elite. I just find it extremely hard to believe that Click is going to be interested in dumping those guys when very little has changed with each player since the time they were signed. They were signed for a reason and those reasons are still there. Same goes for Brantley.

I don’t think Click is sentimental or insecure. Anything can happen. And it wouldn’t shock me if Odorizzi were traded because there’s been some obvious unhappiness on his part. But overall this notion that part of Clicks offseason plan is to dump Brantley, Baez, and Odo to make room for other large free agent contracts seems pretty silly.

 

I agree. Click comes from Tampa. I doubt he will have problems trading guys he signed when that was a weekly accurance in Tampa. He wants to build the best roster he can with the resources he has.

Disagree.... if they can turn Javier plus some minor leaguers into someone like Bieber or Alcantara I'm all for it. I don't want a ton of "starting pitching depth" in the bullpen. I want it in AAA stretched out and ready to go 6 innings when they are called up. We saw this season and in the playoffs the Astros had a few opportunites to stretch Javier back into a starter but just kept him as MR 2 innings in the pen.

We had the hitters to hit HRs... Alvarez, Tucker, and Correa not hitting ONE HR is awful. It would be nice to add more power but with CF, SS, and catcher being the only real likely chances to upgrade the offense I doubt we get more power.