Correa deal caps week of 'big shift' for Twins

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Logically, many around the Twins' clubhouse knew another big move had to be coming, and one thing they'd learned amid this frenzied week of wheeling and dealing from their front office was simple: expect the unexpected.

So you can't necessarily say they were surprised to hear that the Twins signed superstar shortstop Carlos Correa to a three-year deal, which is worth $103.5 million, a source told MLB.com's Jon Paul Morosi.

"Excited" is more like it. "Motivated" works, too. "Confident" will also do the trick.

"I’m sure you guys can sense it, too," catcher Ryan Jeffers said. "There’s just a better energy around this year, and I think us knowing with all the stuff being communicated about teams not trying to win, that kind of being a big topic of the offseason, it’s really great to be part of a team that is clearly trying to win."

"I think I’ve been here for maybe three minutes and you can feel that there is another level of excitement within the group," said Sonny Gray, who joined the Twins via a trade on Sunday.

"Once I signed [my seven-year extension], they said they were going to do what they could to bring a winning team here, and that's what they're doing," Byron Buxton said. "It's very exciting."

This sure doesn't feel like the clubhouse of a team that dropped from back-to-back American League Central championships in 2019 and '20 to last place in '21. Even as Minnesota sank deeper and deeper into the nadir of a division steadily improving around it, club leadership insisted that the Twins weren't rebuilding; they would look to get better in '22 around a group that they still believed in.

There's work left to be done -- the Twins still need pitching help, to be sure -- but so far, the players have seen the actions to back those words and understand the vote of confidence from their front office marked by these splashy deals.

"To bring in a guy that's top-tier talent overnight, it's awesome," Tyler Duffey said. "It tells you all [you] need to know about what they're thinking upstairs. They want to win right now, and I think that's definitely our best chance to do that. Bring in a guy like [Correa] who's been there and done it and has a ton of experience and a lot of years left on his career, it's going to be overnight a big, big shift for us and something to look forward to for everybody."

"It shows commitment from the front office and not to be content with where we are," Gray said. "We want to continue to get better and it feels like that’s the front office showing us as a locker room, showing us as players, 'Hey, we’re going to continue to try to improve this team.'"

Different players were excited about different facets of what Correa's all-around talent could bring to the Minnesota clubhouse. The Puerto Rican will be another strong Latin American presence in a group full of young Latin players. His middle-of-the-order bat speaks for itself. And leave it to the pitcher and the catcher to point out the defense that earned Correa the AL Platinum Glove Award in 2021 stands to benefit a young pitching staff.

"The staff just got a lot better just with a move like that, the way that he plays with the ball up the middle," Gray said. "Especially as a guy who’s going to throw ground balls, just in general, we just got better in a lot of aspects of the game, not just one position."

"I can say something I'm 100 percent sure of: I love him," Miguel Sanó said.

Sanó got a call from his father in the morning to tell him of the news. Buxton's wife, Lindsey, told him while he was in the shower. Jeffers saw the news on Twitter when he woke up.

And yet, all of them were rather matter-of-fact, too, in talking about such a massive signing that happened literally overnight, and it says a lot about the track of the Twins' week that this sort of news almost is matter-of-fact in a way for these players now following a week in which Gray, Gary Sánchez, Gio Urshela and Correa have now become Twins -- of course there's another big move; what's next? Buxton and Gray repeated that they still need to prepare for the season and handle their business as players.

There's still the sense that more help is on its way, too. With Gray and Correa now in the fold, the Twins have made it abundantly clear that they plan to push for the top in 2022 and '23. They still need more pitching to do that, with rumors continuing to swirl about a possible match with the A's for Frankie Montas or Sean Manaea.

Clearly, the Twins' clubhouse knows that too -- and they're eager to see what's next.

"I think there’s more moves coming," Jeffers said. "I don’t think we’re done. I think we get a pitcher or two more. Maybe one more back-end guy to give Taylor [Rogers] a couple days off every once in a while. I think it’s really exciting."