Correa (Update, signs with Twins)

[Sports Guy]

Sign Correa 

Move Mullins and Santander to the Marlins for Anderson, Lopez and Meyer.

Mancini to SD for Reggie Lawson and one of their lottery ticket Intl FA ranked inside their top 30.   Take back one of their pricier older relievers if needs be.  They have 2 guys, both coming off solid years but older and they have depth.

Sign Tommy Pham for OF depth to a cheap 1 year deal.

Mountcastle, Urias, Correa and Anderson on the IF.

Pham, Hays and Mateo/Stewart/et al in the OF..Stowers up soon.

BTw, for those who will ask…I move Santander instead of keeping him because I would rather have Anderson than him.   If we can get Anderson cheap and keep Santander, I would do that.  If we move Mullins and one of those 2, I would be happy.  Rather keep Santander since he is cheaper.

Pham coming off an off year but has some upside and my guess will be pretty cheap.  (Something in the 2-3.5M range)

Even with Correa, your payroll is next to nothing for the next several years.

 

[Ripken]

Can he pitch?

 

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

36 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

I would not be opposed. If you don't see the right player in next year's market, might as well spend the money now and get the guy you want. 

Elias drafted Correa and I trust his judgment if he decides to sign Correa. I just don’t think ownership is going to sign off on the expenditure. 

[spiritof66]

33 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

I would not be opposed. If you don't see the right player in next year's market, might as well spend the money now and get the guy you want. 

I agree. It's nice when the pieces you want are available at exactly the times you want them, but life doesn't always work that way.

One of my problems with the Elias strategy, as I understand it, is the assumption that after you've gotten all your MiL hotshots to the majors, and seen which ones are keepers and which ones aren't, the guys you need to fill gaps and upgrade the team will be available as free agents or in trades, and if they're free agents they'll be willing to come to Baltimore for the salary the Orioles are willing and able to pay.

Well, maybe, and maybe not. 

[Woody Held]

My take.  Making a commitment to a Correa would show that they were serious and it wasn’t lip service when they said they would be in on free agents when they saw we were ready to be competitive.  They  have left Elias alone and allowed for a total rebuild.  Correa would be a team leader and with some trades or savvy lesser free agent signing the rebuild could finally be accelerating 

[jabba72]

Sure why not. 

[crowmst3k!]

If it came to be, it would be just another in a long line of great producers at shortstop...minus a few gap years.  

Ripken - Tejada - Hardy - Correa

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

1 minute ago, crowmst3k! said:

If it came to be, it would be just another in a long line of great producers at shortstop...minus a few gap years.  

Ripken - Tejada - Hardy - Correa

Correa would be the best Orioles shortstop since Ripken. I like his combination of offense and defense over Tejada. 

[Yossarian]

Does Correa have anywhere near 10 years of SS left in him?  IF, they make this move - that has to mean Orioles brass is thinking the window of opportunity is right around the corner.  And if that is the case, getting Correa isn't the last move they will make.  They will be going after pitching aggressively to supplement the good years Correa has remaining.  It would make no sense to spend this type of money on one guy, one game-changing guy, and not support it with a solid pitching staff.  

[DrinkinWithFermi]

Absolutely zero interest in being the team that makes the mistake of giving Correa the ~$350 million dollar contract he's on the hunt for, put me down as a HARD pass.

[MDtransplant757]

I'd like it but the $ concerns me. We should be thinking about keeping Rutschman/Rodriguez and a lot of the talent in the system.

[Sports Guy]

3 hours ago, MDtransplant757 said:

I'd like it but the $ concerns me. We should be thinking about keeping Rutschman/Rodriguez and a lot of the talent in the system.

The beauty of what Elias is doing and has done is that we hopefully have a lot of players making no money for a long time.

Whatever the structure ends up being from this deal, if it happens today, it doesn’t sound like a vastly different system for the younger players.

So, you will still have them cheap for at least 4 years (3 pre arb years and their first arb season). Even that 5th year isn’t going to be that much.

So, if this plan works, you should have very little money allocated on payroll for next 4-7 years in terms of what is in the organization now and what is coming into it via the draft this year.

So, spending 35-40m a year on one player really isn’t a big deal.  Now, once you hit year 6 or so of this deal and other contracts are high, maybe that becomes some what of an issue but by that point, you figure that more money has come into the sport and your payroll will still be able to handle things.

But this is also why you have to keep churning talent and you don’t keep around a Trey Mancini for 8M.  It’s not that he’s not good but his production is replaceable for a fraction of that cost.

Those middling contracts for guys you can easily get 80% production for 20% the cost are the contracts to avoid.

Its why I would deal Mullins even if you signed Correa.  Let’s say the Marlins would trade Lopez and Meyer for him. That’s around 9 years of service time for the 4 Mullins has left over and Mullins is going to be expensive for at least half of that and, let’s face it, there are still questions about just how good he will be in 2-4 years.  So, this allows you to add upper echelon, cheap young pitching and saves you money on the Mullins contracts down the road.
 

 Now, if he continues to be a 5+ WAR CFer, maybe it wouldn’t have been the best decision to do it but I think that’s a risk you take.  I like our chances more with Lopez and Meyer vs Mullins.

I have talked about this multiple times before but the Orioles are set up with the “rookie QB contract” advantage.  That is, when you have a starting QB on their rookie contract and that QB is excelling, you now have the best asset in sports.  It allows you to bring in higher priced talent.  When that QB is making 15% of your cap, it becomes harder to build a team.   
 

The Orioles figure to have lots of rookie QB contracts on the team and that allows you to spend irrational money on an elite talent fairly easily.  Is 10/350 a smart deal for Correa?  No, of course not.  You hope he has 4-5 more years at SS and can then move to 3rd and be a productive third baseman.  But if he can be an MVP level player for 3-4 years and productive after that, it’s probably worth it until those last 2-3 years when he’s likely giving you very little.
 

But if you have been a playoff team a lot and especially if you have won a chip, it’s worth it.

[oriole]

I would be ecstatic to see a bold move like this. Next years FA SS class isn’t great and all the infielders coming up through the system could be delegated to 2B and 3B, creating more competition. Obviously 2022 would still be a bad year, but the guys would come into an environment where winning is the actual goal and I can’t think of any reason why that wouldn’t be a positive influence. 

 

I have absolutely no expectations this could actually happen btw. This is the exact approach I support though. Imagine Rutschman, Correa, and Mullins up the middle and hitting 1, 2, 3 with Mountcastle in cleanup. It’d be awesome. That doesn’t fix the pitching…but at least the offense and defense would be fun.
 

 

[wildcard]

11 hours ago, DrinkinWithFermi said:

Absolutely zero interest in being the team that makes the mistake of giving Correa the ~$350 million dollar contract he's on the hunt for, put me down as a HARD pass.

I agree

[Aristotelian]

3 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

The beauty of what Elias is doing and has done is that we hopefully have a lot of players making no money for a long time.

Whatever the structure ends up being from this deal, if it happens today, it doesn’t sound like a vastly different system for the younger players.

So, you will still have them cheap for at least 4 years (3 pre arb years and their first arb season). Even that 5th year isn’t going to be that much.

So, if this plan works, you should have very little money allocated on payroll for next 4-7 years in terms of what is in the organization now and what is coming into it via the draft this year.

So, spending 35-40m a year on one player really isn’t a big deal.  Now, once you hit year 6 or so of this deal and other contracts are high, maybe that becomes some what of an issue but by that point, you figure that more money has come into the sport and your payroll will still be able to handle things.

But this is also why you have to keep churning talent and you don’t keep around a Trey Mancini for 8M.  It’s not that he’s not good but his production is replaceable for a fraction of that cost.

Those middling contracts for guys you can easily get 80% production for 20% the cost are the contracts to avoid.

Its why I would deal Mullins even if you signed Correa.  Let’s say the Marlins would trade Lopez and Meyer for him. That’s around 9 years of service time for the 4 Mullins has left over and Mullins is going to be expensive for at least half of that and, let’s face it, there are still questions about just how good he will be in 2-4 years.  So, this allows you to add upper echelon, cheap young pitching and saves you money on the Mullins contracts down the road.
 

 Now, if he continues to be a 5+ WAR CFer, maybe it wouldn’t have been the best decision to do it but I think that’s a risk you take.  I like our chances more with Lopez and Meyer vs Mullins.

I have talked about this multiple times before but the Orioles are set up with the “rookie QB contract” advantage.  That is, when you have a starting QB on their rookie contract and that QB is excelling, you now have the best asset in sports.  It allows you to bring in higher priced talent.  When that QB is making 15% of your cap, it becomes harder to build a team.   
 

The Orioles figure to have lots of rookie QB contracts on the team and that allows you to spend irrational money on an elite talent fairly easily.  Is 10/350 a smart deal for Correa?  No, of course not.  You hope he has 4-5 more years at SS and can then move to 3rd and be a productive third baseman.  But if he can be an MVP level player for 3-4 years and productive after that, it’s probably worth it until those last 2-3 years when he’s likely giving you very little.
 

But if you have been a playoff team a lot and especially if you have won a chip, it’s worth it.

And by the way, just because you signed him for 10 years doesn't mean you have to keep him for 10 years. We could keep him for three years and then turn around and flip him as long as he is still performing. Of course it will get harder and harder to do that but players with big contracts have been traded.