A 442-Foot Advertisement For Why the Rangers Should Pay Carlos Correa

Trigger warning for Rangers fans: chances are you’re going to find the video below these words deeply unpleasant. It is a Houston Astro annihilating a baseball thrown by a Texas Rangers pitcher and depositing it in center field—442 feet, to be exact, as you probably gleaned from the headline.

Would it help to know that said Houston Astro, two-time All-Star Carlos Correa, is a free agent this winter? And that Rangers general manager Chris Young is already making noise about the team being “very active” this offseason and establishing Texas as “a very desirable destination for players?” (For what it’s worth, if you’re skeptical, team president Jon Daniels doesn’t blame you. The organization also might not have a choice but to spend if baseball’s new collective bargaining agreement includes a recent proposal for every team to maintain a salary floor of $100 million.)

Far be it for me to tell other people how to spend their money—no, wait, actually, I love that, and this free agent class boasts plenty of enticing options for Texas to pursue. We’ll dive more into them in time, but with each passing day, I become increasingly convinced that Correa is the best target on the board.

We’ll get into that, too, when the time is right, and the list of reasons for why it makes sense is dramatically longer than, “Damn, he can hit a baseball a really long way.” But, well, damn, Carlos Correa can hit a baseball a really long way, so go ahead and fire up the clip and just imagine him doing it to the Astros in Arlington next summer versus the other way around.