Trevor Story’s injury proves a cautionary tale for giving large contracts amid medical concerns.
After agreeing to and losing out on two mega-contracts with two different teams, Correa finally settled with the Minnesota Twins, signing a six-year, $200 million deal with a four-year, $70 million vesting option.
The agreements with the Giants and Mets, both worth over $300 million, fell apart due to concerns with his right leg, which contains a surgically-inserted metal plate. It is worth noting that Correa hasn’t spent any time on the IL due to his right leg in his major league career.
Regardless, as the highly-comical Correa saga was ending, another was developing in Boston, which now knows it will likely be without Trevor Story for most if not all of 2023.
Story signed a six-year, $140 million deal with the Red Sox last offseason and finished 2022 with a .794 OPS in only 94 games. Not great.
To make matters worse, since news of Story’s elbow surgery became public, it became apparent that the Red Sox and other suitors had serious concerns about Story’s long-term health; the elbow began giving him trouble in 2021 when Statcast picked up a decline in his throwing velocity.
Boston ignored these warning signs and still signed Story to a large contract. Now, with Xander Bogaerts off to San Diego and Story out indefinitely, the Red Sox have no discernible options at shortstop as of now.
It’s almost like the Red Sox should have listened to the medicals and just paid Bogaerts instead.
Nonetheless, it is very interesting that a similar situation could be unfolding with Correa. Granted, the leg injury hasn’t given him problems (as far as we know), but he has missed significant time before due to other injuries; he only played 75 games in 2019. So Correa may not be as obvious an injury risk, but the Twins also gave him $60 million more than Story got.
The Twins, who of course already have Correa’s medicals, don’t seem too concerned, but it does raise a few alarms to me that two separate medical staffs from other teams flagged the same issue.
Of course, there’s always the chance that San Francisco and New York used the issue as an excuse to try and get better terms, but I doubt both teams would try to pull the same stunt, especially with a no-nonsense agent like Scott Boras running negotiations.
We really don’t know what the future holds for Correa and his health, but we do know that Chaim Bloom and the Boston front office look damn foolish right now after Story’s surgery and Bogaerts’s departure. Happy New Year, Sox fans!
Taking any nefarious motivations out of the equation, we all just witnessed why San Francisco and New York ultimately chose not to sign Correa. Whether their concerns about his health were valid, they were clearly prevalent, and neither of them wants a Story/Boston situation on their hands.
Let Minnesota have him back, and on the off-chance Correa does have problems with that leg in the future, New York and San Francisco won’t be paying him $300 million to sit on the IL.
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