Jul 21, 2025; Los Angeles, California, USA; Minnesota Twins shortstop Carlos Correa (4) on deck during the fifth inning at Dodger Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images / Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images
Now-former Twins star Carlos Correa was sent to the Houston Astros on Thursday in a shocking trade deadline deal, but it was essentially a salary dump for Minnesota. An opportunity to play third base for the franchise he began his career with was a big reason why he waived his no-trade clause.
“I’ve been asking the Twins to play third base for the last two years,” Correa told The Athletic. “But it was not aligning because of how we were constructed. When [Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey] told me the Astros wanted me for third base, I was like, that would be perfect.”
Despite his desire to play third, Correa has never started at the hot corner in 1,202 regular season games. He started 443 games in a Twins uniform, and 438 of those came at shortstop, with the other five coming in the DH role.
In Correa’s seven-year career in Houston, he started all but two games at shortstop and the other two were also at DH. The Astros will be without third baseman Isaac Paredes for the rest of the season, so they badly needed a replacement as a contender competing for the best record in the American League.
His fit on the Astros makes sense, but that doesn’t mean the Twins opting to trade him in exchange for a 26-year-old, Single-A pitching prospect does. Minnesota is reportedly paying $33 million of the remaining $105 million Correa is still owed, so the move is undeniably a salary dump by a team that is in the process of being sold after 40 years under control of the Pohlad family.
“Over the course of the last couple days, certainly when the Houston rumors came out, he wanted to have a brief conversation about it and I said my door is always open,” Falvey said on a Zoom call with reporters. “We had that discussion. Not to get into too many specifics about the private nature of that discussion, but Carlos was never sitting there demanding a trade or wanting to do something else. If it was right for the Twins and it was right for him, he was open to the conversation.”
In the end, shedding salary was the “right” move for the Twins.
