In the Off-Season Guide today I said this.
"Today, I found something that completely blew me away to the point I am going to end up writing three articles that will have the same fact in them. As described in the Who are they? article- Trevor Story is the most statistically similar player independent of age to Carlos Correa. That is in the entire history of MLB baseball in the Baseball Reference database. Mic Drop."
I can't get over this. So, because here we are are all about the numbers, get ready for an avalanche of them. How close are they?
Story was born 11/15/1992 (28 y, 11 m, 28 d)
Correa was born 9/22/1994 (27 y, 1 m, 21 d)
Correa first appeared on 6/8/15
Story first appeared on 4/4/16
Participation/ Durability
The two players have appeared in almost the same number of games. Story has played in 86% of the games since his debut. As most Astros fans know, Correa has been injured some and appeared only in 77% of the games since his debut.
Advantage: Story
Batting/ Hitting/ Running
There are a ton of numbers here.
First focus on how almost even many are.
Some differences
Correa gets more walks
Correa strikes out less
Story has more power (Colorado effect?)
Story barrels more for hard hits
Park factored wRC+ favors Correa
Story steals more but is caught more
One of the issues here that makes it hard to compare any Rockies player to anyone else is the Coors Field effect. According to Baseball Reference (https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/2021-misc.shtml), Coors Field is rated as a 112 Batting Park Factor (>100 favors hitters) while Minute Maid Park is rated as a 101 Park. It is an oversimplification to say Story will lose 5.5% (half of 11%) of his offensive production, but he will lose production when he leaves Colorado.
Similarly, Story's home and away splits are worrisome. Just considering his OPS (home 0.972, road 0.752), a team has to project what the production would be in Houston.
Advantage Correa
Defense Fielding
I find these numbers shocking
I may need help from you all in interpreting these numbers. I think they are saying. Correa and Story have saved almost the same number of runs defensively. Story is EXCELLENT at making plays in his zone. Correa makes more plays out of his zone. Story has the higher Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR).
Overall, I think this says Story is the better SS but less flashy range. I still can't believe this.
So absolutely yes these two players are shockingly similar. Story is less effective away from Coors Field but the Crawford Boxes would be his friend.
Who do you have and why? I would prefer Correa but Story is a LOT better option than I had previously thought.
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Most numbers are from Fangraphs.com
Trevor Story
Carlos Correa