Is correa gonna be a darvish situation? He's clearly viewed coming into FA as one of the top guys for obvious reasons. But I'm sitting here looking at teams and idk man... who's gonna go nuts for him? People are pushing the yankee narrative but they have two top 50 SS prospects one of whom is in AAA and one who's in A+ and they are already sitting on $210 mil in payroll. Like sure it's the yankees and money often doesn't matter but... surely they can spend money wiser than Correa or realistically any SS. To me it seems more likely for them to go with someone like Simmons on a short term deal to fill a spot until those guys are ready or just give Torres another go and hope he's good enough until they are ready.
Houston would be an obvious potential landing spot. And depending on how things go maybe they make the most sense.... but devils advocate here... they are sitting at
$168.5M opening day payroll. Last year their opening day payroll was highest in team history at $187.6 mil. So, if Correa is gonna get $30 mil a year they will smash that. Not to mention houston also has a top 50 prospect in Jeremy Peña in AAA who plays SS.
Looking through the rest of baseball... idk man. Like maybe the Angels? I feel like they'd be more focused on pitching given their starters gave up a team 4.78 ERA but their SS play last year was pretty god awful. And unlike the two teams above they don't have any obvious near term prospects who make any sense.
And the other thing to consider here is that it's not just Correa. Story is also still out there. So if the potential landing spots are this weak for him individually it seems like story removes a lot of leverage he might otherwise have. And the fact that the cubs are being linked to him now is interesting to me because i feel as though this isn't a case where the cubs are gonna throw crazy money at him. I instead feel as though his market is weak and he might end up being a relative bargain. That to me seems more in line with the way jed had been talking and it also makes a bit more sense to me than the cubs suddenly spending crazy to win now. Like if they think they can get him on a relatively decent contract why not go after him?