The Path Not Taken: Christian Walker for Carlos Correa
The Twins wanted to put Christian Walker in the Carlos Correa trade. The Astros balked, which is the right move because it prioritizes 2025. But creates a logjam of corner infielders for 2026.
I wrote earlier this week about how the 2025 trade deadline shaped the Astros roster not just for the rest of the 2025 season, but also for the 2026 and 2027 seasons. The Astros acquired three players who are not rentals in Carlos Correa, Jesus Sanchez, and Ramon Urias.
Today, I’m going to write about another choice the Astros made that will shape the Astros roster for the 2026 and 2027. But this is a trade they did not make. The Astros chose not to include Christian Walker in the Carlos Correa trade. Walker thus remains with the Astros for this season’s playoff push, and possibly those in the next two seasons.
I’ll discuss why the Twins might have tried to put Walker in the Correa deal, why the Astros chose to keep Walker, and what the implications are of the Astros choice for 2026 and beyond.
The Details
Bob Nightengale of USA Today wrote a tick-tock about the Correa trade. It included details that the sides talked about including Walker as part of the return for Correa. Nightengale followed up with a tweet clarifying negotiations details, writing, “The Minnesota Twins were the ones who brought up Christian Walker in the Carlos Correa trade talks. The Astros declined.”
There has been no other reporting to date on Walker being in the trade, so that is all we have to go on. Most importantly, we do not know how including Walker in the deal might have changed the financial part of the deal. The Twins are sending the Astros $33 million to pay down Correa’s contract. With Walker in the deal, the financial part would have changed, but we do not know how much it would have changed it.
Walker has two more full seasons left on his contract that pays him $20 million a season. Correa has three more seasons left on his contract that pays him $33.3 million a season.
Why The Twins Wanted Walker
The Twins as an organization are stuck between two poles right now. The first is that the team is for sale, but the reason the team is for sale is because its owners have loaded the team with over $400 in debt. Rumors are this is not from running the baseball team, but using it as collateral for other loans in businesses such as real estate. From that perspective, the Twins big trade deadline was a fire sale, designed to reduce the team’s payroll into the future so the team would be more attractive to a potential buyer.
The overwhelming conventional wisdom about the Twins trade deadline is based on this perspective. Nightengale, in his column reporting on the Correa negotiations, also engaged in some opinion writing, calling their many trades “Ugly. Outrageous. Unfathomable. Disgraceful.”
The other pole is that the Twins are having a bad season but will be contenders again in 2026 in a weak AL Central. Many, including presumably Nightengale, will laugh at this, but the 2026 Twins will feature an excellent top of the rotation in Joe Ryan and Pablo Lopez, and many young starters who could blossom into a potential #3 starter (Zebby Matthews, David Festa, and trade deadline additions Taj Bradley and Mick Abel). They have a star in Byron Buxton and solid players around the diamond—Royce Lewis, Matt Wallner, Brooks Lee—now their shortstop—rookie Luke Keaschell. And their two prospects—outfielders Emmanual Rodriguez and Walker Jenkins—have OPB's over .400 in the minors this year and are both close to getting a call up.
From that perspective, adding a player for 2026 like Walker make sense. He could potentially help their team, and at a position of need.
And the cost for getting Walker is not very much from the standpoint of a team that wanted to rid itself of Correa’s contract. This part depends on what financials would have been worked out between the two front offices, but it’s certainly plausible that there could have been a straight-up swap of Walker’s contract for Correa’s contract.
If that’s the case, the Twins gets an obligation of about $47 million through 2027 while giving up an obligation of about $111 million through 2028. You can see the Twins—and their potential new owner—might prefer that. And you can see why the 2026 Twins would like a player over what they got for Correa, which was essentially nothing.
Of course, as Nightengale notes, the Astros balked at sending out Walker in the deal and instead got $33 million from the Twins to offset Correa’s salary. The Twins got nothing for their team for the future, but can clear Correa’s salary from their books.
Why The Astros Wanted to Keep Walker
Why did the Astros want to keep Walker? That answer is very simple. They need him for the 2025 season, and the Astros value 2025 more than they value future seasons.
The Twins thought the Astros might want to trade Walker for the same reason that the Twins wanted to trade Correa—his contract is underwater. He is not producing the value for which he is being paid. I wrote at the beginning of July about Walker’s poor season, finding he had “an overall deterioration in his athletic abilities.”
The good news is that he’s picked things up since then. In July, Walker slashed .318/.367/.466 for an .833 OPS, his best month of the season. It’s an indication that there is some ability left in Walker, even if it took him 3 months to tap into it.
But the biggest reason that the Astros kept Walker is that they would not have had anybody to play first base without him in 2025. Well, they could have kept Jonathan Singleton or let Mauricio Dubon play there a bunch. But neither is a major league regular in general, and certainly not at a big power position like first base. With Isaac Paredes out for possibly the rest of the season, the Astros didn’t have a ready replacement for Walker at first base for 2025.
And as I noted 2025 is the most important season for the Astros right now. That’s not just because it is the one they are playing. It is because they Astros are likely to be a weaker team in 2026 and 2027 than they are this season. Framber Valdez is a free agent after this season and is likely to leave. They lack a clear replacement for Valdez from their young pitchers.
Trading Walker may make sense from a financial standpoint for the Astros. If they just traded contracts with the Twins, they would have saved $10 million off their luxury tax payroll for the 2026 offseason, opening up more space to address their hole in their starting rotation this offseason. But opening up payroll space for next season is not that important to the Astros as compared to trying to win the AL West this season and advance as far as possible in a weak American League this season.
Trading Somebody This Offseason
Keeping Walker is the right move for the 2025 season, but it does create a logjam for the 2026 season. The Astros now have 3 starting level players for 2 positions in Correa, Paredes, and Walker. Paredes has played first base in each of the 2022, 2023, and 2024 seasons.
Part of why the Twins asked for Walker in the Correa deal is their recognition of this logjam for the Astros. The Astros could carry all three next season, but getting all of these everyday players into the lineup would be difficult assuming all starters are at full health.
It is quite possible, if not likely, that the front office will try to trade their way out of this logjam in the offseason.
Correa has a no-trade clause and has publicly said he only waved it to go the the Astros. He will not be traded.
Walker might be traded (hey, the Twins might be interested). The issue with a Walker trade is that his contract is underwater. He is being paid more than his value. Trading Walker may be like the Ryan Pressly, Rafael Montero (or Carlos Correa) trades where the Astros send out money for another team to take on Walker. That Walker has two more years on his contract makes this more difficult, though not impossible.
The goal of trading from the corner infield logjam is not just to avoid wasting a player, but to allocate resources to address another hole on the 2026 team, which is likely in the starting rotation. Sending out money in a Walker trade reduces the ability of the Astros to free payroll to acquire a pitcher.
The alternative would be to trade Paredes for a starting pitcher. Paredes is about to enter his second year of arbitration and the Astros could look to find a pitcher making a similar salary. I’ll talk more about this when we get to the offseason. For right now, just make a note of this possible trade.
Overall, the Astros front office made a choice to hold on to Christian Walker instead of sending him to the Twins in the Correa deal. That was the right choice for the 2025 team and its playoff ambitions. It does create a logjam they will need to address this offseason.
Good article! There is at least one other possibility I can see, barring an injury to one of those players: they may not have reached the serious stage, but there were discussions about moving Paredes to 2B if the Astros were to re-sign Bregman. Without an obvious candidate for an everyday player there right now, that might make sense to explore a little more.