Carlos Correa Is Coming

The Houston Astros grabbed all of our attentions a couple of weeks ago, when they rattled off 10 wins in a row and vaulted to the top of the American League West. They’ve cooled off quite a bit since, going 3-6 since that streak. Yet, despite their recent struggles, they had built up enough of a cushion to maintain a .618 winning percentage and a four-game lead over the second place Angels. Not bad for a team that lost 111 games just two seasons ago.

The Astros have a very good record, and a decent shot at making the playoffs (45% by our calculator), but their roster isn’t without holes. And perhaps none of these holes is bigger than the one at shortstop. Currently, the Astros are employing Marwin Gonzalez as their primary shortstop, with a little bit of Jonathan Villar on the side. To date, these two have wRC+s of 68 and 30, respectively, and have contributed a total of -0.5 WAR.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The Astros signed Jed Lowrie to a three-year contract back in December to play shortstop, but he lasted all of three weeks before landing on the shelf with a thumb injury. As of this writing, Lowrie’s on the 60-day DL and isn’t expected to return until sometime after the All-Star break.

Gonzalez and Vilar are unlikely to contribute much value for the Astros going forward. And, given the nature of Lowrie’s injury, it’s anyone’s guess whether he’ll be of much use in the season’s second half. The immediate future looks pretty bleak for the Astros at short, but help is on the way. The Astros promoted top prospect Carlos Correa to Triple-A on Tuesday, putting him just a step away from the big leagues.

Correa’s promotion was certainly warranted. He hit an absurd .385/.459/.726 in 29 Double-A games this year, and was also went a perfect 15-for-15 in stolen-base attempts. If he does anything remotely close to that in Triple-A, the Astros brass will be tempted to — and likely will — plug Correa into the lineup sooner rather than later.

As you probably know, Correa’s been one of the best prospects in baseball for the last couple of years. And with the recent promotions of Kris Bryant and Addison Russell, he’s arguably the best prospect still in the minor leagues. Heading into the season, Kiley McDaniel ranked him as our fifth-best prospect, trailing only Bryant, Russell, Byron Buxton and Julio Urias.

Since the Astros took Correa with the #1 overall pick back in 2012, he’s hit a remarkable .316/.396/.494 in the minors. That’s pretty darn impressive for a shortstop. It’s even more impressive considering he’s been exceptionally young for his league every step of the way. He wRC+’d 147 as an 18-year-old in the Midwest League, and then posted a 144 mark as a 19-year-old in the California League. Now, at the tender age of 20, he’s doing more of the same in the high minors.

Correa’s demonstrated excellent control of the strike zone — leading to few strikeouts and many walks — in his baseball career. Last year, in High-A, Correa posted walk and strikeout rates of 12% and 15%, respectively. Both of these figures were markedly better than the California League average. His rates were very similar in 2013: 11% and 16%.

Correa’s strikeout and walk numbers have been on point this year as well. This is a notable accomplishment, as Double-A is the level where a hitter’s walk rate starts to gain substantial predictive value. However, Correa’s breakout campaign hasn’t really been a function of his controlling the strike zone. Instead, it’s had to do with his hitting, and the massive amounts of damage he’s done when he’s made contact.

Including his seven home runs, Correa put the ball in play 93 times in his brief stint with Double-A. And based on the results, it appears that many of those 93 were hit exceptionally hard. In addition to the seven that left the ballpark, 17 more resulted in extra-base hits and 21 more fell in for singles. Unsurprisingly, both his isolated power (.342) and BABIP (.447) were tops in the Texas League by a wide margin.

Neither hitting for power nor running a high BABIP are out of the ordinary for Correa. He did both of these things at an above-average clip in A-Ball as well, but has really outdone himself this season. Of course, it’s well documented that a hitter’s fate on balls in play has more to do with luck than skill. The same also goes for power in small samples. Even so, Correa’s performance to date suggests the power might be starting to coalesce, and that he might be moving towards the 55-power, 20-homer ceiling that Kiley McDaniel anticipates.

Correa’s excellent-but-mortal 2014 campaign graded out extremely well by my KATOH system. His forecasted 7.4 WAR through age-28 ranked 25th among prospects heading into the year. I’m working on integrating regressed stats (rather than raw ones) into my KATOH model, so I’ll hold off on plugging Correa’s 2015 performance into the KATOH machine. Small sample, high-BABIP stat lines are exactly the types of performances that will be addressed with this change.

Instead let’s look at some comps for Correa and his monster 2015 numbers. Using league-adjusted, regressed stats (a new feature!), along with age, I calculated the Mahalanobis distance between Correa’s Double-A performance and every Double-A season since 1990 in which a batter recorded at least 400 plate appearances. Below, you’ll find a list of historical players whose performances were nearest and dearest to Correa’s, ranked from most to least similar.

And here’s a list containing only the players who made the majority of their starts at shortstop.

*Batters who have yet to play their age-28 seasons.

I’ve compiled several of these comps lists since I started writing for FanGraphs, but I think this one’s the best I’ve seen to date, especially due to the guys at the top of the list. Cliff Floyd, Mike Cameron and Chris Young all turned into fine players. And although he’s yet to play his age-28 season, that Mike Trout kid is supposed to be pretty good, too. There weren’t all that many shortstops who approximated what Correa did in the minors, but several of those who came closest had solid careers. Some of the more prominent ones include Alex Gonzalez (the erstwhile Blue Jay, who retired in 2007), Erick Aybar and Alfonso Soriano.

Up to this point, I’ve written exclusively about Correa’s offensive exploits. That’s bound to happen when writing about a player whose OPS is pushing 1.200. But Correa’s much more than just an interesting bat. He also plays a fine defensive shortstop — Kiley gives his fielding a 50 and his arm a 65. A hitter like Correa, who can also play some defense, makes for a pretty exciting player.

So Carlos Correa looks like he’ll be pretty good. The more pressing question for the Astros, however, is whether he can be good right now. That’s a little harder to say. On the one hand, he’s absolutely demolished the minors these past few weeks. His Double-A stat line suggests he’s absolutely ready. At the same time, though, it took place over the course of 30 just games. Five weeks ago, Correa was a 20-year-old coming off of a broken leg, who had never played above A-Ball. I’m not sure if 140 plate appearances of excellence is sufficient evidence that he’s big-league ready.

Steamer, which theoretically takes all of this into account, seems to think he can hold his own, at least. The system pegs him for a 92 wRC+ from here on out. That would be more than cromulent for a shortstop. Less than half — 11 of 23 — of qualified shortstops are hitting better than that this season.

Based on his minor0league performance, Correa looks like he’s just about ready for the show. Whether he gets the call tomorrow, next month or three months from now remains to be seen, but it’s hard to imagine the Astros will hold him down too much longer. This is especially true given their lack of alternatives. In any event, all evidence suggests that Correa has a bright future ahead of him. Shortstops who hit like he does are few and far between. And players who dominate Double-A like Correa has often go on to do big things in the majors. Now, we play the waiting game.