Houston Astros: Will The Team Be Able To Afford Carlos Correa?

The Houston Astros’ season has been underway for nearly three weeks now and these guys have had nice start out of the gate.

The Houston Astros’ season has been underway for nearly three weeks now and these guys have had a nice start out of the gate.

Although there are concerns on whether or not this team will be able to have a robust offense regularly as well as the bottom portion of our pitching rotation being able to perform at high level, this team sits at the top of the AL West with a 7-4 record.

This has been the result of this team knuckling down and concentrating on what went wrong and improving upon it.

The depth that this team has moving forward is sensational and it will certainly be needed as they stand the test of time through the 162-game season.

In my opinion, it’s the most loaded team we’ve had in quite some time and Houston Astros fans should be excited all of these guys have been assembled together win a ton of baseball games.

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With that being said, there is already talk about trying to lock up one of the team’s biggest phenoms.

Yep, I’m talking about shortstop Carlos Correa.

Just a few days ago, Jon Heyman of Fan Rag Sports reported via Greg Genske — Correa’s agent — that Correa would never do an early extension and that he’d like to do negotiations on a year-by-year basis.

But Correa shot down that report yesterday telling the Houston Chronicle’s Jake Kaplan this:

"“I love the Astros. I love the team. I love the fans in Houston. I love everything. I’ve still got five more years here until I’m a free agent. So, I’m not worried about it,” he said. “I’m not thinking about it right now. If the Astros are going to approach me at some point, I’m more than glad to listen to what they have to offer. But this is (a) business, so we’ll see what happens.”"

He also elaborated his point as well:

"“I’m not shutting the door,” he said. “The price has got be right, you know what I mean? And it’s got to be early. Once I get to arbitration there’s no turning back.”"

Correa will make $535,000 this season likely slightly above that in 2018 before being arbitration-eligible in 2019.

He’s expected to see a significant pay bump at that point moving forward before becoming a free agent in 2022 when he has reached the age of 27.

Heyman also mentioned that Correa was offered a number closer to $565K but Correa turned it down because he said “he wasn’t going to put his name on something he didn’t believe in.”

He also added this when speaking with Kaplan:

"“I’ve told [Genske] that I’m not going to sign any bad deals,” Correa said. “I have no need to.”"

Heyman said that Correa has multi-million deals with Adidas and some others.

That should more than make up for what many think he should be compensated more handsomely for his production.

So the biggest question is that can Houston Astros afford Correa moving forward?

He’ll be expensive but he still remains one of the top shortstops in the game — let alone his youth at 22-years-old — and he’s given the Astros everything he has to help the team win.

Although his numbers dipped a bit from a stellar rookie season — he had 20 home runs and a .811 OPS which was down from 22 home runs and .857 OPS — a lot teams would kill to have a player put up those type of numbers in their respective lineups.

He was off to slow start this season but he’s rapidly turning back into the Correa that we’ve all come to love.