Tag Archives: Carlos Correa

What a long, strange trip it’s been . . .

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Carlos Correa

Correa took a medicals-inspired, coast-to-coast trip back to the Twins in the end.

This much we should understand about today’s typical Met fan, and it’s not the first time this lifelong (theirs) Met fan has said so: Today’s typical Met fan is ready to push the plunger on a season over one bad inning—in April. The least shocking thing when Carlos Correa didn’t go from likely signing to donning a Met jersey at an introductory press conference was any Met fan surrendering 2023.

From the moment the Twins with whom Correa played last year came back into play for the shortstop, when the Mets proved as alarmed over Correa’s long-term health as the Giants had previously, many Met fans did. Social media was as crowded with them as a major subway transfer station is crowded during a New York rush hour. But there were voices of reason to be heard if you knew where to listen.

And what those voices said, from the top down, possibly including the fellow lifelong Met fan who owns the team now, was, If this guy’s rebuilt lower leg betrays him when the deal is halfway finished or less, he’s going to become a fan target and we are going to resemble the village idiots for signing him. At least, at the full thirteen and $350 million originally planned.

Now the Twins—who weren’t exactly circumspect about wanting to have Correa back longer term—have brought him back for six years and $200 million. ESPN’s Jeff Passan broke that news aboard Twitter Tuesday. The deal is now official with the physical passed.  Even if it took Correa two long stops aboard what sometimes resembled the crazy train to get there.

Remember: The Giants had landed him—until they didn’t. They quaked over something in Correa’s medical profile, enough to let him walk right into the Mets’ open arms on the day they expected to present him at a presser climbing into a Giants jersey. First it was thought to be Correa’s back. Then, as the Mets were ready to wrap him up for Christmas, the discourse turned to that now-notorious rebuilt ankle.

The Mets had Correa ready to place under New York’s Christmas tree—until they didn’t. They, too, quaked over something in the medical profile. Unlike the Giants, the Mets were willing to adjust. We know now they worked up an adjusted deal for six years and $157.5 million (were willing to go six assured at $175.5 million (roughly $27 million annually), with additional years up to six to follow based upon annual physical examinations.

The Giants’ prudence (if that’s what it was) about Correa in the end still leaves them with more holes to fill. The Mets’ such prudence doesn’t leave them with more than maybe a dent or two to fix. Remember: the Mets won 101 games last season before they collapsed in postseason round one. They’re not exactly in terrible 2023 shape, either.

But it looks as though Steve Cohen isn’t going to be the wild free-spender the rest of baseball world believed and maybe feared. It also looks as though he’s not willing to be as risky as people thought when it comes to players with injury histories no fault of their own but profound enough. Even players he says publicly, as he did about Correa, might be necessary pieces for a full-distance championship team.

Remember: Cohen once let a shiny draft pick (pitcher Kumar Rocker) walk rather than sign him over concerns about shoulder issues. He’s the owner who let Jacob deGrom, the arguable best pitcher in baseball when healthy (underline those two words), walk. (To the Rangers, for five years and $185 million.) If he was willing to let the game’s best pitcher when healthy (underline those words) walk, he wasn’t going to fear letting one of its best left-side infielders walk over similar alarms.

Is it unrealistic to think that the Astros, who raised Correa in the first place and saw him shine with them for seven seasons, let him walk into free agency in the first place because they, too, had long-term concerns about his long-term health?

Cohen may be willing to open the vault wider than any other major league owner, but it doesn’t mean he’s going to be that drunk a sailor. Remember: He had a plan and executed it regarding deGrom, signing seemingly ageless future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander for two years.

He also locked down late-game relief ace Edwin Diáz and outfield mainstay Brandon Nimmo. Extending first base anchor Pete Alonso isn’t unrealistic, either, especially after letting talented but too-firmly blocked Dominic Smith walk into the Nationals’ arms. The plan for Correa was moving him to third to play aside uber-shortstop incumbent Francisco Lindor. Without Correa? They have a pair of talented third basemen, veteran Eduardo Escobar and sprout Brett Baty.

The Mets aren’t hurting without Correa. The Twins are risking that they won’t be hurting if and when Correa begins hurting. As it was, Correa on his 2022 deal—three years, $105.3 million, and three opt-outs, the first of which Correa exercised to play the market in the first place this winter—proved a second half godsend, when the Twins became injury riddled enough but Correa managed to stay the distance.

The Twins also liked Correa’s clubhouse leadership and prodding teammates to improve. “The vision he has,” assistant pitching coach Luis Ramirez told The Athletic, “the awareness, the anticipation about what is going to come next. When he needs to talk to a teammate about an adjustment that needs to be made, or just, to like, picking up a teammate, or paying attention to small details in the game that others don’t see—he makes us better in everything, in the field, everywhere.”

They’re also banking on Correa maturing further and further away from his Astrogate past. Correa was once the staunchest public defender of the Astros’ 2017 World Series title. Yet he said not so fast, more or less, at that notorious February 2020 word salad-bar presser; their illegal, off-field-based, electronic sign-stealing Astro Intelligence Agency was “an advantage. I’m not going to lie to you.”

If you know what’s coming, you get a slight edge. And that’s why [then-general manager Jeff Luhnow and then-manager A.J. Hinch] got suspended and people got fired because it’s not right. It’s not right to do that. It was an advantage. But . . . it’s not going to happen moving forward.

Correa also took the Astros’ superstar second baseman José Altuve off the Astrogate hook, insisting—and the evidence since brought forth backs it up—that Altuve not only declined to work with stolen signs transmitted to him but actively objected to the infamous trash can banging of the pilfered intelligence while he was at the plate.

“The man plays the game clean,” Correa insisted, after then-Dodger Cody Bellinger fumed that Altuve should return his 2017 American League MVP award. “That’s easy to find out. [Astrogate whistleblower] Mike Fiers broke the story. You can go out and ask Mike Fiers: ‘Did José Altuve use the trash can? Did José Altuve cheat to win the MVP?’ Mike Fiers is going to tell you, straight up, he didn’t use it. He was the one player that didn’t use it.”

That’s what SNY’s Andy Martino said, too, in his Astrogate book, Cheated. It’s what Evan Drellich—one of the two Athletic reporters (with Ken Rosenthal) to whom Fiers blew the Astrogate whistle—is liable to reiterate in his forthcoming (next month) Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball’s Brightest Minds Created Sports’ Biggest Mess. It’s what too many fans continue to ignore.

Without Correa, and placing their shortstop present and future into Gold Glove-winning rookie Jeremy Peña, last year’s Astros were down to only four or five remaining from the notorious 2017-18 Astrogate roster, including Altuve. The facts didn’t stop fans from hammering Altuve along with the others with chea-ter! chea-ter! chants—all the way into the World Series they won straight, no chaser at last.

The Twins bring Correa back with a front-loaded deal that includes no opt-outs and a full no-trade clause. They’re still taking a big risk on his health even for six years. God help Correa if his ankle or anything else breaks down and reduces him to journeyman status if he can play at all. Fans never let facts get in the way of fuming rants against what they think are fragile goldbrickers. Ask any Yankee fan when it comes to Jacoby Ellsbury.

But would a cynic suggest that, maybe, just maybe, in his heart of hearts, Correa was happy enough in Minnesota to let this weird coast-to-coast, medicals-scripted swing bring him back there in the first place, for a few more dollars than the Mets were willing to go on the same six guaranteed years? Maybe a cynic would. Maybe enough Met fans would. Did I just repeat myself?

The realist knows that, as fine as he’s still going to be, Correa’s ancient ankle repair did cost him in the long run. That, and not his controversial uber-agent Scott Boras, wrote this costly script. Costly for Correa. As The Athletic also points out, he lost seven years and $150 million compared to the original Giants offer, ended up with a lower offer from the Mets (half that $315 million over half the time), and signed with the Twins for four years and $85 million less than the ten/$285 million they first offered.

But realism isn’t half as much fun as ranting your head off about a season blown because of a signing blown, is it? Such is one of the major headaches of being a Met fan since the day they were born.

All dressed up and no place to go

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Carlos Correa

The Giants’ hesitation on sealing the deal sent Correa—the arguable best shortstop on this winter’s free agency market—into the Mets’ unhesitant arms for a twelve-year deal.

Well, now. A lot of teams this winter approached the free agency market like the proverbial children in the candy stores granted permission to raid the stock as they please until they can’t carry any more out. A lot of very wealthy ownerships have made a fair number of players of most ages very wealthy men going forward.

But at least one reasonably wealthy ownership, the group that owns the Giants, led by Charles Johnson but operated by his son, Greg, resembles Olympic hurdles champions who leapt and bounded their way to the gold medals without contact with even a single hurdle but tripped walking upstairs on their ways home.

They had erstwhile Astros/Twins shortstop Carlos Correa on board for thirteen years and $350 million. Then they didn’t. They had Correa in San Francisco, all dressed up and no place to go, instead of being at an Oracle Park podium ready to shoulder into a spanking new Giants jersey.

Over a week after the Giants and Correa agreed to the deal, the Giants quaked over a medical question and thus postponed the scheduled Tuesday introductory press conference. They said, essentially, “Not so fast.” The Mets, with single owner Steve Cohen bearing dollars unlimited and anything but shy about spending them, said, essentially, “Not fast enough.”

The Mets now have Correa for a mere twelve years and a mere $315 million. The Giants blinked. The Mets pounced.

The Giants pleaded a “difference of opinion” over Correa’s physical exam. Correa’s agent, Scott Boras, pleaded that the Giants got edgy over ancient medical issues, not present or coming ones. Enter Cohen, with Correa unexpectedly back on the open market, once Boras worked the phones and tracked Cohen down in Hawaii, where he and his wife are spending the Christnukah holidays.

Exit Correa from San Francisco. Enter Correa to New York. What began in San Francisco and continued with Boras and Correa over lunch probably telling each other, “Relax, brah,” ended at fifteen minutes past Simon & Garfunkel time.

That’s the time Correa agreed to become a Met, with his only immediate issue likely to have been jet lag from such a short turnaround in back-and-forth bi-coastal flights. Also pending a fresh physical, but without any apparent paranoia on Cohen’s or his organisation’s part over . . . just what, precisely?

“You’re talking about a player who has played eight major-league seasons,” Boras said. “There are things in his medical record that happened decades ago. These are all speculative dynamics. Every team has a right to go through things and evaluate things. The key thing is, we gave them medical reports at the time. They still wanted to sign the player and negotiate with the player.” Until they didn’t.

“It sounds as if there was a very old Correa injury—pre MLB—that was raised as a potential issue. It has not cropped up again,” tweeted Susan Slusser, the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Giants beat writer. “None of Correa’s other physical issues have required medical intervention or ongoing treatment.” She added that if it became cold feet, that’s usually on the owners and not their front office.

Last winter, the Twins signed Correa as a free agent to three years and $105 million, with an opt-out clause enabling Correa to terminate the deal after the 2022 or the 2023 season, his choice. He chose to exercise it after the 2022 season. They whispered about back issues last winter, until Correa had himself checked by one of the nation’s top spine surgeons, Robert Watkins, M.D.

“He said, ‘This dude is as stable, as healthy as he can be’.” Correa said then.

Hearing that from the best back doctor in the world, it was reassuring. I knew that already because I’ve been feeling great. But to get that expert opinion, after an MRI and the work I’ve been putting in . . .

This is what I tell people. There’s no way you can go out and win a Platinum Glove if your back is not right. There’s no way you can put up an .850 OPS if your back is not right against the elite pitching we’re facing nowadays. There’s no way you play 148 games—and I could have played more, but the COVID IL got me—if your back’s not right. There’s no way you sign a $105 million deal for three years, go through physicals for insurance and for the team if it’s not rightthere are a lot of people who make decisions when it comes to the Giants.

“Almost all of the small [decisions for the Giants] are no doubt made by [team president] Farhan Zaidi and/or [chief executive officer] Larry Baer,” writes Craig Calcaterra at Cup of Coffee.

When things get big—and a $350 million commitment is pretty big—I would guess that a lot more people have a say in that and I can’t help but wonder if there was some buyer’s remorse re: Correa on the part of the partnership at large in the past week. If so, it would not be hard for someone in-house to suggest, order, or otherwise put out there in the ether the notion that Correa’s medicals are scary as a pretext for scuttling things.

“The owners didn’t want to pay the contract,” Slusser added. “All this ‘we almost got Bryce [Harper] we almost got [Aaron] Judge’ is just cover for the owner to pretend he wanted to spend. He didn’t. He’s a cheapskate. How pathetic.”

Some think Cohen is channeling his inner George Steinbrenner, minus that George-bent toward turning the Mets’ atmosphere into a hybrid between the Mad Hatter’s tea party and a psychiatric ward. Those owners to whom spending is about as agreeable as a colonoscopy may think Cohen’s ignited a new, slow-burning slog liable to culminate in a future owner-provoked stoppage that translates, almost as usual, to a demand someone else (namely, the players) stop the owners before they overspend, mis-spend, or mal-spend yet again.

But then there’s the thought of a secondary method to Cohen’s apparent madness. While he puts a major league product on the field that glitters while going for the gusto, he has room aplenty to continue his oft-proclaimed intent to remake/remodel the Mets’ entire system.

Be reminded, please, that it’s not as though Cohen just went nuts on the sales floor when he went to market. He locked down incumbent relief ace Edwin Díaz to the largest deal ever for his Díaz’s line of work. Then he lost Jacob deGrom to free agency and the Rangers but replaced him with (so far) ageless future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander. He locked down incumbent center field centerpiece Brandon Nimmo and signed Japanese pitching gem Kodai Senga.

Now, pair Correa with his longtime friend Francisco Lindor on the left side of the infield, Correa slotting over to third, in a combination not alien to either player in other places. Thus, too, Cohen bumped the Mets’ offense up a few more rungs (they were good at working counts last year and Correa gives them extra there, too), behind a solid pitching staff and with a reasonable bench behind them.

The expectations now will be the Mets going deeper into the postseason next year than a round-one disappearing. Not to mention becoming first in line to shop at the booth of a certain unicorn wearing Angels silks until he reaches his first free agency next winter. The expectations for the Giants, by comparison, may only begin with a wisecrack from The Athletic‘s Giants writer, Tim Kawakami. “[L]et me suggest,” he writes, “that the Giants probably need a crisis manager as much as they need a general manager these days.”

They once said that almost annually about Correa’s new employers. But these are not your grandfather’s Mets. Sixty years ago, the Mets’ original owner told a writer that their maiden season of 120 losses begged for serious improvement. “We are going to cut those losses down,” insisted Joan Payson. “At least to 119.”

One of their fans was a Long Island kid named Steve Cohen. With the financial power to support it, he now behaves as though the Mets have just got to get the wins (regular and postseason) up at least to 119. (That’s a joke, son. Sort of.)

The Twins deliver a stunning signing: Carlos Correa

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Carlos Correa

Almost nobody expected the longtime Astros shortstop to sign with the Twins.

It’s hard to look at Carlos Correa signing with the Twins for three years and $105.3 million without knowing the Astros’ remaining Astrogate contingent is reduced officially by one. There are now only three position players and one pitcher remaining from the tainted 2017 World Series winners.

This should be good for the Astros in terms of leaving the Astrogate taint further and further behind them. But I suspect it won’t be. With only four Astrogate-team members left last year, the Astros still heard it loud and long from fans on the road. Some of it was mere booing, catcalling, and “chea-ter!” chants. Some of it was inflatable and actual trash cans hitting fields.

I still suspect it’s not going to stop until the last Astrogater standing no longer wears an Astro uniform. Not until second baseman Jose Altuve (who actually didn’t partake all the way in the Astro Intelligence Agency’s 2017-18 off-field based, illegal camera-abetted, electronic sign-stealing operation), third baseman Alex Bregman, first baseman Yuli Gurriel, and pitcher Lance McCullers, Jr. move to other teams if not into retirement.

As it happens, I have tickets for what will now be Opening Day, period, in Angel Stadium on 7 April. Guess who the Angels host to start their regular season. My son and myself will probably wonder en route the ballpark how many other Angel fans will turn up with inflatable trash cans, bangable trash cans, and more to continue letting the Astros have it.

It took decades before the 1951 New York Giants were verified once and for all as off-field based sign-stealing cheaters en route the comeback that forced the fabled pennant playoff. It took only two years from the 2017 World Series to expose and verify the AIA. And it took only a couple of hours during the pandemically-aborted 2020 spring training for the Astros to show the world they didn’t quite think their cheating was that big a deal.

Correa since the infamous spring training 2020 presser has been maybe the most stubborn defender of the Astros’ 2017 Series title. “When you analyze the games,” he said before the coronavirus closed that spring training and half the season to come, “we won fair and square. We earned that championship.”

Funny, but that’s not exactly what Correa said at the infamous presser. While Astros owner Jim Crane tripped over himself, Bregman tossed word salad, and since-gone outfielder Josh Reddick “couldn’t really say [the AIA operation] did or didn’t” give the Astros an advantage, Correa said, essentially, not so fast:

It’s an advantage. I’m not going to lie to you. If you know what’s coming, you get a slight edge. And that’s why [then-general manager Jeff Luhnow and then-manager A.J. Hinch] got suspended and people got fired because it’s not right. It’s not right to do that. It was an advantage. But . . . it’s not going to happen moving forward.

After the Braves nailed last fall’s World Series at the Astros’ expense, Correa spoke in terms that would have made him a fit on the 20th Century Yankees.

Second place is not good enough for us. I know it’s not good enough for you guys. But it speaks volumes of how good our organization is, how talented our clubhouse is. Five ALCS in a row. Three World Series in five years. I don’t know what else you want to ask from a great ball club . . .People expect greatness when you talk about the Houston Astros. They expect us to make the playoffs every year. They expect us to be in the World Series every year.

But the only one they won is the one that just so happens to be tainted.

And, speaking of the Yankees, take a poke around the vast multitudes that root for or at least follow them and it seemed as though the number one thought in and out of their minds Saturday morning was, How on earth could the Yankees miss out on signing Correa? Did they really take Josh Donaldson’s contract on in that trade with the Twins just to let the Twins snatch Correa with the savings?

Others thought Correa outsmarted himself into taking considerably less with the Twins than he thought he might get on a market that got forced into overdrive thanks to that ridiculous owners’ lockout. But he’ll pull down the fourth-highest single-season salary of 2022, behind pitchers Max Scherzer (Mets) and Gerrit Cole (Yankees) plus outfielder Mike Trout (Angels).

The deal also includes opt-outs after this season and next. Turning 28 in the final third of this coming September, and assuming he has a typically Correa season in Minnesota, he could still opt out and play next winter’s market for something more to his supposed liking. Maybe he didn’t really outsmart himself, after all?

Maybe the Yankees still have a spring surprise yet to play. They unloaded Gio Urshela (shortstop) and Gary Sanchez (catcher) to bring Donaldson (third base), Isiah Kiner-Falefa (shortstop), and Ben Rortvedt (catcher) aboard. Maybe they have Kiner-Falefa in mind to play support after they sign free agent shorstop Trevor Story? Maybe?

Or maybe the Twins have decided, yes, they’re coming into it to try to win it, including enticing the shortstop anchor from the penthouse of the American League West for a season at least. Maybe they can make Correa happy in the Twin Cities, after all.

Maybe he can join his fellow high 2012 draft pick Byron Buxton (Correa and Buxton were numeros uno and two-o in that draft) to yank them from the basement to the penthouse. He did prove last year that he knows how to win without any funny business that anyone knew of, even if the Astros came up two bucks short in the World Series.

‘[T]he makings of a formidable lineup are present in Minnesota, though they’ll need a few things to break right,” writes MLB Trade Rumors’s Steve Adams, who also notes their “patchwork starting [pitching] rotation” remains a cause for some alarm even with trading for Sonny Gray from the apparently tanking Reds.

From the defensive side of things, Correa gives the Twins a pair of Platinum Glove winners, joining Buxton in that regard. With quality defenders like [Max] Kepler, Urshela and young catcher Ryan Jeffers also occupying key spots on the diamond, the Twins should have a strong defensive team overall. The Twins already ranked 12th in the Majors both in Defensive Runs Saved and Outs Above Average in 2021, and Correa should boost both marks.

There’s something else Correa could do now that he’s become a Twin, too. Something not exactly unprecedented. He could become the latest 2017 Astro to drop all pretenses, denials, and whataboutisms, and come a lot cleaner about Astrogate.

That began with utilityman Marwin Gonzalez, who signed with the Twins as a free agent for 2018, then with the Red Sox as a free agent for 2021, got released by the Red Sox last August, and signed to return to the Astros for their run to the World Series.

Gonzalez broke the ice around the time of the infamous 2020 Astro presser. “I’m remorseful for everything that happened in 2017,” he told reporters, “for everything that we did as a group, and for the players that were affected directly by us doing this.”

He, too, didn’t use the C word. Maybe it’d be too much to expect Correa to use it, too, if he decides it’s safe to come all the way clean now. But it would give him a better look either way than the one he often had clinging stubbornly to the idea that the 2017 World Series title wasn’t really tainted.

Correa vs. Jeter vs. Syndergaard

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Carlos Correa, Derek Jeter

Carlos Correa’s jab at Hall of Famer Derek Jeter’s Gold Glove awards inspired the New York Post to insert Jeter showing one of his Gloves into this action shot of Correa with the leather. But was Correa really out of line?

Carlos Correa versus Derek Jeter isn’t exactly the equivalent of a cage match, no matter what Noah Syndergaard might want to make of it. Correa has just finished his seventh major league season; Jeter is a Hall of Famer who played twenty major league seasons. Correa’s career has miles to go before it sleeps; Jeter’s baseball legacy is secure in Cooperstown.

Correa actually said, aboard a recent Me Gustan Los Deportes (I Like Sports) podcast: “Derek Jeter didn’t deserve any of the Gold Gloves he won.” Syndergaard, now a former Mets pitcher freshly signed with the Angels, was not amused: asked by MLB Network whom he’d like to strike out the most, Syndergaard didn’t flinch.

Thor’s preferred strikeout target is Correa. “Not just for the obvious reason, but just what he said about Derek Jeter not deserving his Gold Gloves,” he said. “I think that was a little ridiculous to say.”

The “obvious reason,” of course, is the lingering stench of Astrogate and Correa’s frequent willingness to embrace the villain role the scandal imposed on the Astros, an imposition too likely to remain until the last member of the 2017-18 Astros no longer wears their uniform.

The next-obvious reason might be Correa winning this year’s American League Gold Glove award for shortstop, plus being a free agent and drawing a lot of attention as a contract candidate for the Yankees and other teams looking for better than they’ve got at shortsop.

Jeter wouldn’t let himself be drawn in. Today the Marlins’ chief executive officer, Jeter simply dismissed Correa’s jab: “I didn’t think much about it. I don’t know how my name came up. My Spanish is not that good, I still haven’t seen it, I don’t know how my name was brought up, but it doesn’t even warrant a response. I mean I could go a lot of different directions but I won’t.”

That was the same kind of high-road travel for which Jeter was known well enough during the prime of his playing career. But was it actually that ridiculous to critique Jeter’s Gold Gloves?

When Jeter wasn’t yet eligible for Hall of Fame election, Jay Jaffe wrote The Cooperstown Casebook: Who’s in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Who Should Be In, and Who Should Pack Their Plaques in 2017. He did it position by position. When it came to the shortstops, Jaffe looked at Jeter in the chapter’s “Further Consideration (upcoming or overlooked candidates” subsection.  And this is what Jaffe concluded about Captain Clutch:

Seemingly engineered to withstand the spotlight’s glare, Jeter spent two decades in Yankee pinstripes pulling off the remarkable feat of simultaneously exuding charisma and remaining completely enigmatic, able to evade virtually every controversy that surrounded the franchise. A starter for sixteen playoff teams, seven pennant winners, and five [World Series] champions, he ranks among the position’s best hitters, collecting more hits than any other infielder, and ranking third in batting runs among shortstops (353) behind [Hall of Famer Honus] Wagner and [Hall of Famer Arky] Vaughan. Defensively, his strong arm, sure hands, and low error totals helped him pass the eye test of casual fans, broadcasters, and even the opposing managers who bestowed those Gold Gloves. However, his range was limited—he moved to his left about as well as Dick Cheney—and his -246 fielding runs is more than double the total of the next-closest shortatop; he was at least ten runs below average in three Gold Glove seasons. Still, Captain Clutch was unflappable in the big moments, hitting .304/.374/.465 with twenty homers in the postseason. Expect him to pull in at least 97 percent [of the Hall of Fame vote] in 2020.

Jeter ended up pulling 99.7 of the vote for his Hall of Fame election. He also inspired the strange phenomenon of Hall voters all but conspiring actively to make him the twenty-third Hall of Fame player to stand alone among incoming players on the Cooperstown podium.

The pan-damn-ic kept it from working out quite that way, of course. Jeter was inducted formally in 2021 with Ted Simmons and Larry Walker, both of whom were elected last winter, as was longtime Major League Baseball Players Association leader Marvin Miller posthumously. He didn’t quite get to stand alone.

But notice the text on Jeter’s Hall of Fame plaque:

Heartbeat of a Yankee dynasty defined a two-decade run of Bronx dominance that produced 17 postseason appearances, seven American League pennants and five World Series championships. Selected to 14 All-Star Games and named 1996 AL Rookie of the Year. Winner of five Gold Glove Awards, appearing in all of his 2,674 games in the field at shortstop. Totaled 200-or-more hits in eight seasons, retiring sixth all-time with 3,475. Scored 1,923 runs, with 100-or-more in 13 seasons. In a record 158 postseason games, batted .308 with 111 runs, 200 hits, 32 doubles. Earned 2000 World Series Most Valuable Player Award.

There you have it. Except for mentioning his five Gold Gloves almost in the middle of his other accomplishments, there’s not. one. single. word. about Jeter’s shortstop defense. Not one. Mentioning that he played every major league game of his career at the position is a question of presence, not performance. The plaque speaks essentially to what Jaffe isolated, Jeter being that great a batter among his fellow shortstops.

Let’s revisit where Jeter stands among his fellow post-World War II/post-integration/night ball-era Hall of Fame shortstops, according to my Real Batting Average (RBA) metric: total bases + walks + intentional walks + sacrifice flies + hit by pitches, divided by total plate appearances:

Shortstop PA TB BB IBB SAC HBP RBA
Luis Aparicio 11230 3504 736 22 177 27 .398
Ozzie Smith 10778 3084 1072 79 277 33 .422
Phil Rizzuto 6719 2065 651 35 195 49 .446
Pee Wee Reese 9470 3038 1210 67 176 26 .477
Alan Trammell 9376 3442 850 48 200 37 .488
Robin Yount 12249 4730 966 95 227 48 .495
Derek Jeter 12602 4921 1082 39 155 170 .505
Barry Larkin 9057 3527 939 66 126 55 .520
Cal Ripken 12883 5168 1129 107 137 66 .539
Ernie Banks 10395 4706 763 202 141 70 .565
HOF SS AVG .486

There’s no question. Jeter is an above-average Hall of Fame shortstop at the plate; only Barry Larkin, Cal Ripken, and Ernie Banks (in ascending order) are past him there.

But that’s entirely at the plate. In the field, at shortstop, Jeter has a pocketful of isolated highlight-reel plays—the Flip, the Seat Dive, you name them—and they surely contributed to the image that he was an overall virtuoso with the leather and on the run. And that’s the problem. Perception is still everything to the casual observer and to the fanboi alike.

But perception is not evidence. The real evidence says that Jaffe had Jeter right in the field: he had the basic skills to enable him to pass the eye test with the minimum passing grade. But like the student who could pass his subjects without trying too hard wouldn’t advise anyone else to try it, you wouldn’t advise another shortstop to try passing the eye test with only the basics in the field unless he, too, is embedded on a passel of division/pennant winners and five-time World Series champions.

The table that follows is Derek Jeter’s fielding record during his five Gold Glove seasons, looking strictly at the number one job a defensive player has; namely, helping his team keep the other guys from putting runs on the scoreboard. The glossary is: DRS-defensive runs saved; RF/9-range factor per nine innings’ play; RF/9-LG-his league’s range factor per nine innings; RF/6-range factor per game; RF/6-LG-his league’s range factor per game.

Derek Jeter Gold Glove Years DRS RF/9 RF/9-LG RF/G RF-G/LG
2004 -13 4.46 4.56 4.32 4.53
2005 -27 4.76 4.60 4.56 4.55
2006 -16 4.14 4.60 3.97 4.42
2009 3 3.90 4.36 3.64 4.31
2010 -9 3.78 4.40 3.62 4.36
AVG-Gold Glove Years -15 4.21 4.50 4.02 4.43

Jeter won his first Gold Glove at age thirty, after he’d been the Yankees regular shortstop for nine years and after he and his Yankees already earned four pennants and World Series rings. There’s an awful lot of cred attached to him already just by dint of that kind of flight jacket.

He’d already shown his postseason mettle. He’d already proven himself money at the plate in those postseasons. He’d already secured his eternal image in Game Three of the 2001 American League division series with the fabled Flip—hustling down from his position across the first base line, grabbing an off-line throw home as he crossed the line a third of the way up from home plate, and throwing backward still on the run to get Oakland’s Jeremy Giambi at the plate.

The most likely reason Jeter won those five Gold Gloves to come was his image, the rep his image produced, perhaps the fact that he produced both as a Yankee—but not for his actual position performance. With the possible exception of his fellow Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera, Jeter was the first player you thought of when someone mentioned the Core Five who brought the Yankees back to greatness during the first half of Jeter’s career.

He was a good defensive shortstop who had periodic highlight-film plays in him, and executed them memorably, but shook out in the long run as a slightly below-average defensive shortstop for his time and place. It’s no crime to look at the evidence and make that conclusion based on the evidence as a whole, surface and depth alike. It doesn’t diminish the plate skills, the leadership, the public carriage that really put Jeter in the Hall of Fame in the first place.

If you were to see a shortstop with those net results who didn’t wear the Yankee uniform during Jeter’s career, you’d probably laugh your head off at the suggestion that you’d seen a Gold Glove shortstop. Just don’t let yourself go there about whether Correa did or didn’t deserve his Gold Glove this year:

Carlos Correa’s Gold Glove DRS RF/9 RF/9-LG RF/G RF-G/LG
2021 20 3.91 3.81 3.83 3.72

You can see this year’s American League shortstops weren’t quite as rangy as they were during Jeter’s five Gold Glove seasons, but you can also see Correa standing well above the league average for saving runs from his position and standing at least ten points above his league average for getting to balls in the first place.

If someone other than Correa had said aloud, on the record, that Jeter didn’t deserve his five Gold Gloves, it wouldn’t have been even an eighth as momentarily controversial. Neither would it have broiled Noah Syndergaard into having to defend a boyhood baseball hero’s honour with an urge some think may not stop with just a strikeout.

ALCS Game Three: Rock and troll

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Carlos Correa, Eduardo Rodriguez

Rodriguez (right) couldn’t resist trolling Carlos (It’s My Time!) Correa as the top of the sixth ended . . .

Carlos Correa grounded out to end the Astros’s sixth Tuesday night. Red Sox starter Eduardo Rodriguez couldn’t resist pointing to his wrist, trolling Correa’s becoming-more-familiar “It’s my time!” gesture whenever nailing a key Astros hit. There was a birthday boy in the house who wasn’t necessarily amused.

“No, no,” Alex Cora hollered, as Rodriguez returned to the dugout during the sides changing. “Don’t do that!” The last thing the manager wanted on his 46th birthday was any of his Red Sox poking the Houston bear they were taking down, before the bear could even think about stealing their picnic baskets.

Not even the pitcher who’d just pitched six solid innings the only blemish of which was a three-run homer two innings earlier. Not even while the Red Sox still held a six-run lead that finished in a 12-3 demolition giving the Red Sox a 2-1 American League Championship Series advantage and the Astros a monumental migraine.

An inning and a half worth of three-up, three-down baseball that looked to shape into a pitching duel between Rodriguez and Astros starter Jose Urquidy got ripped into a Red Sox demolition in the bottom of the second after starting as a mere tear. Two walks sandwiching a J.D. Martinez one-out double merely loaded the bases for Christian Vazquez’s line single the other way to right field and kept them there.

Oops. Christian Arroyo ripped one off the mound and off Astros second baseman Jose Altuve to send Martinez home with a second Red Sox run. Falling into an early 2-0 hole with ducks still on the pond against these Astros still seemed surmountable. Until Kyle Schwarber told them otherwise.

After taking ball one inside, ball two downstairs, and ball three just inside, Schwarber took Urquidy’s fastball around the middle halfway up the right field seats. It was the third salami slice for the Red Sox in three ALCS games. As if slicing two in Game Two wasn’t precedent enough, the Schwarbinator’s blast made the Red Sox the first ever to slice three in any postseason series.

Kiké Hernández followed Schwarber at once with a base hit pulled up the left field line, and Xander Bogaerts ripped a single up the pipe one out later, and finally Astros manager Dusty Baker got Urquidy out of there before the Red Sox could cover his grave. Yimi Garcia shook off a second-and-third-making wild pitch to dispatch Alex Verdugo for the side at last, but aftershocks were still to come.

They started an inning later, when Hunter Renfroe drew a one-out walk, stole second, then took third when Astros catcher Martin Maldonado’s throw to second bounced away from Altuve, before coming home on Vazquez’s floating base hit into short center. Then Arroyo drove Garcia’s slightly hanging slide into the rear row of the Green Monster seats.

The Astros may have punctured the impenetrable when Astros center fielder Kyle Tucker parked one into the right field seats with Michael Brantley (leadoff single) and Yordan Alvarez (one-out single banged off the Monster but played perfectly by left fielder Verdugo to hold him) aboard in the top of the fourth.

Two innings and three Astro pitchers later, Rafael Devers took a leadoff walk and the Astros got two outs quick enough to follow, especially center field insertion Jose Siri’s sliding catch running in long to take Verdugo’s floater into shallow center. Phil Maton then relieved Brooks Raley for the Astros, and he arrived just in time to feed Martinez something to hit into the Monster seats about as deep as Arroyo’s blast traveled.

Kyle Schwarber

The Schwarbinator slicing salami in the second to start the Red Sox romp in earnest . . .

Before this ALCS ends, the Red Sox may need to put new tires on the laundry cart into which they dump their home run hitters to celebrate the blasts in each moment. They’re already down to the last millimeter of tread as it is.

As if making sure the sealant on the first puncture held fast, Devers turned on Astro relieve Ryan Stanek’s first one-out pitch in the bottom of the eighth and sent that into the Monster seats, too. Renfroe’s diving catch on Correa’s two-out, opposite-field drive in the top of the ninth must have felt like the first mercy shown the Astros all night long.

Astros pitching coach Brent Strom wondered aloud whether his charges might be tipping pitches. Not willing to commit to that quite all the way, he acknowledged that—between the Red Sox’s postseason plate discipline and all-fields approaches and Astro pitchers falling behind in counts so often now—he’s more than a little concerned.

“This is a very good hitting team,” Strom said of the Red Sox, “and they’re very adept at picking up little things, much more so than most teams,” Strom said. “We need to be very cognizant of the little things, tipping-type things, things like that, that they’re very astute at. We’ve just gotten behind hitters.”

Cora said the Red Sox approach began changing when Schwarber came aboard in a July trade with the Nationals. “We were expanding,” Cora said, meaning the strike zone. “We didn’t walk too much, and when he got here and when he started playing, it was different. It’s a different at-bat, and other guys have followed his lead, and right now, like I said, this is the best I’ve seen this team this season offensively.”

Correa thinks the Red Sox aren’t picking up Astro pitch tips so much as they’re just doing their jobs at the plate when the Astros’ pitchers aren’t doing theirs on the mound. As an Astro, it’s murder for Correa. But as a baseball fan, pardon the expression, it’s a blast.

“It’s fun to watch as a fan of the sport, see how everybody in the lineup has the same approach,” the shortstop said. “They’re not chasing. They’re staying in the zone. They’re not swinging at borderline pitches. It’s beautiful what they’re doing. We’ve got to find a way to throw more strikes and keep the ball in the ballpark.”

But as much talk came about Rodriguez giving Correa a taste of his own celebratory medicine as about the Red Sox’s thorough dismantling of the Astros’ balky pitching staff and shaky offense—particularly their big three of Altuve, Brantley, and Alex Bregman now standing a combined 5-for-36 in the set so far—after the game finally ended.

Cora didn’t exactly hold it against Rodriguez, making a point of embracing his pitcher when Rodriguez returned to the dugout. But he still didn’t want Rodriguez or any of his players re-awakening the suddenly sleeping Astro giants.

“We don’t act that way,” he said postgame. “We just show up, we play, and we move on, and he knows. I let him know. We don’t have to do that. If we’re looking for motivation outside of what we’re trying to accomplish, we’re in the wrong business. The only motivation we have is to win four games against them and move on to the next round.”

Correa didn’t exactly mind. The way he spoke postgame, you’d have thought the Astros forgot about such concepts as bulletin-board fodder. “He did my celebration,” said the shortstop liable to command a nice free agency deal this winter, no matter his Astrogate past.

“I thought it was kind of cool,” continued Correa, who’d done his “It’s my time” wrist-tap in Game One after breaking a three-all tie with an eighth-inning bomb. “It’s just the way baseball should trend. I loved it personally . . . I keep it real all the time and say how it is.”

Rodriguez admitted he was caught up in the moment after getting Correa to end the sixth. Cora was stern but not exactly harsh with his pitcher back in the dugout. His embrace fit perfectly with Rodriguez’s previous insistence that Cora was like a father or older brother to his players as well as a manager.

“He understands that we’re not that way.” said Cora, whose Red Sox almost got humbled out of the races in the second half between injuries, COVID sufferings, and a bullpen remake. “We talk about humble approach and humble players, and that’s who we are. We like to grind, and we like to play, but we don’t do that.”

Well, good Lord, a team hammering and blasting its way to a rout can’t be faulted for being just a little less than humble in the moment here and there. Can they?