CLOCK IS TICKING
Forget what you’ve heard: Astros are on the clock to make a shrewd move
Sep 21, 2021, 1:47 pm
Pay the man his money. Composite image by Jack Brame.
Both sides have stated their positions clearly – no contract negotiations until after the baseball season. What sounded fair and reasonable back in spring is pretty one-sided now. Carlos Correa's bargaining position with the Astros is the sound of an old-fashioned slot machine hitting a jackpot.
The Astros shoulda, woulda, coulda given Correa what he was asking for last spring. Now the Astros will pay dearly for playing tough business guy.
Here's what should be done, even though it's unconventional and makes too much sense. Correa, his high-power William Morris show biz agent, Astros owner Jim Crane and general manager James Click need to be locked in a dingy Telephone Road motel room with no windows, the sheets haven't been changed since two guests ago, no room service, phones checked at the front desk and nobody leaves until Correa and the Astros have a new 10-year deal.
I don't care how much it costs. It's not my money. But it is my team.
If it takes till tomorrow, well, happy 27th birthday Carlos Correa – Baby, You're a Rich Man (great song by the Beatles).
Otherwise … there's just too much otherwise. The Astros are headed to the playoffs and they'll be playing on prime time TV (well, prime time in Australia maybe). If Correa is a dangling free agent available for the Yankees and other big-budget teams to pluck, you can imagine what the TV announcers will be saying …
"Houston, your star quarterback is demanding a trade, you just lost your star basketball player, now you're risking your beloved, homegrown superstar shortstop in free agency … what's wrong with you, Houston?"
Correa has hand. Correa doesn't need the Astros. There will be more than a couple teams pulling out their pens to sign him to a deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The Astros do need Correa, though. There's only one of him.
Correa is a shrewd businessman. He saved his best season for his contract year. You know the numbers: .285 with 24 homers. Just as important, and you didn't see this coming, he leads the Astros in games played. The knock on Correa was that he wasn't durable. He is now.
Correa is playing like a monster. It must be frightening for pitchers when Correa wags his bat ready to drive in a key run – he's good in the clutch. In the field, it's wondrous to watch him cock his arm before uncorking a 95-mph rocket to first.
Correa is the gem of this year's free agent collection, a better bet than Trevor Story or Corey Seager or Javier Baez. Somebody's got to play short for the Astros next season. Why not get the best one, and right now only the Astros can negotiate with him? If Correa gets to free agency, the Astros could be behind the 8 ball if another team, maybe the Yankees, says, "Whatever another team offers you, we'll top it by $20 million."
If the Astros make the World Series, the announcers could say, "Remember 2017 when the Astros won the World Series and Carlos Correa proposed to his girlfriend on the field? Well now they're having a baby and that child will grow up in Houston because Correa has a new long-term deal to stay with the Astros for 10 more years. What a fairy tale story!"
Or they could say, "In 2017 the Astros became world champs and Correa popped the question to his girlfriend. Now his bags are packed for another team."
Correa is the vocal team leader, the loudmouth in the dugout, the cocky shortstop who doesn't take crap from the other team. He's menacing at the plate, sensational in the field, a good teammate in the clubhouse and a role model in the community. The current Astros roster has a good three or four more seasons of competing for World Series titles. Correa may be the most important piece for that future. The Astros can't let him slip away over money.
Correa wants to stay in Houston. Don't worry about his "my last year with the Astros" comments. That's just posturing. Astros fans want him to stay in Houston. Agents and general managers know to the penny what offers will be out there for Correa after the season.
After the season may be too late for the Astros.
It’s been an excellent weeklong stretch of games for the Astros tempered by the news of yet another season-ending injury to a starting pitcher. To get the bad news out of the way, it comes as no surprise that Ronel Blanco needs Tommy John surgery and is done until at least the middle of next season. While Blanco had not been nearly as good through nine 2025 starts as he was last season, he was still taking his regular return and on average getting into the sixth inning. Blanco turns 32 years old at the end of August. He’s not even salary arbitration-eligible until 2027. That last fact may be good news for him. The Astros will likely keep Blanco next year in hopes he can contribute in the second half of the season, since they will pay him barely the Major League minimum salary ($780,000 next year) That’s in contrast to Jose Urquidy, who in the midst of his salary arbitration years would have cost about three and a half million dollars to keep, so the Astros non-tendered him.
With Blanco joining Hayden Wesneski in the “See you next year! Hopefully.” club, it struck me as interesting that the Astros let Lance McCullers throw 102 pitches in his Wednesday outing vs. the Athletics. That’s eleven more than he had thrown in any of his prior four starts. McCullers holding up physically would be a huge boost, but the new essentials in the Astros’ rotation are Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown. Framber has settled in to the tune of a 1.93 earned run average over his last four starts. Brown’s season ERA is 2.00. Brown has had five days of rest before all eleven of his starts this season. This Sunday is Brown’s presently next scheduled outing. He would work on four days of rest if on the mound Sunday against the Rays.
Taking the last two games from the Mariners was huge (for the second half of May anyway). Keeping the good times rolling by sweeping the two-game miniseries from the A’s was less significant but still nice. Maybe not quite nice enough to have Frank “The Tank” from the movie Old School belting out “We’re going streaking!!!” but it did give the Astros their first four game winning streak of the season. They still have not lost more than three straight.
On a heater!
Speaking of streaking, time for annual mention of one of my all-time favorite baseball factoids. The 1916 New York Giants hold the MLB record for the longest win streak with an incredible 26 in a row. Earlier in the season the Giants ripped off 17 in a row. Combine the two streaks and that’s 43-0! The 1916 New York Giants finished in fourth place. In all their other games the Giants went 43-66. The American League’s longest ever winning streak is of fairly recent vintage. The 2007 Cleveland Indians won 22 straight. There have been only two other winning streaks since 1900 of at least 20 games. The 1935 Chicago Cubs won 21 straight. The Art Howe-managed 2002 Oakland A’s won 20 in a row, and were the inspiration for the movie Moneyball. The Astros have three 12 game winning streaks as the longest in their history.
Expect the unexpected
Tuesday’s win over the A’s brought the Astros to the one-third completed point of the regular season. Isaac Paredes was definitely their best offensive player to that milepost. His “on pace for” numbers were the best on the ballclub 33 home runs and 93 runs batted in. Paredes also led in runs scored with 29. The last Astro to lead the team in all three of those categories was Alex Bregman who did it in both 2018 and 2019. That Bregman was clearly a better player than this Paredes, but Isaac healthy and making “only” 6.625 million dollars this season is a heck of a lot better value than Bregman at 40 mil for the Red Sox, especially given that while Bregman was off to a sensational start for Boston, he’s now out for at least a month with a quad injury.
Hunter Brown is on pace to win 20 games. The last Astro to get there was Gerrit Cole on the last day of the 2019 regular season. The day before that Justin Verlander won his 21st game.
The Cleveland Guardians’ bullpen was awesome last season, by far the best in the league with four relievers who each pitched in at least 74 games posting ERAs of 1.92 or lower, headlined by closer Emmanuel Clase’s microscopic 0.61. One-third of the way through this season for the Astros: Bryan Abreu sat at 1.90, Steven Okert 1.82, Josh Hader 1.57, Bryan King 1.52.
For Astro-centric conversation, join Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me for the Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast which drops each Monday afternoon, with an additional episode now on Thursday. Click here to catch!
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