Carlos Correa Out for the Season After Tearing Ankle Tendon, Twins Lose Their Captain
The Minnesota Twins lost their shortstop and their season in the same news cycle. Carlos Correa is out for the rest of 2026 after tearing a tendon in his ankle that will require surgery.
This is the worst-case version of an injury the Twins have been monitoring all spring. Correa missed time with ankle soreness in April. He returned, played through it, and now it is a tear severe enough to end his year.
The Twins were already in trouble. They are under .500. The starting rotation has been a mess. Royce Lewis is hurt, again. The offense has been carried by Byron Buxton and very little else. Losing Correa for the rest of the year takes a team that was hovering in the wild card race and pushes it toward the deadline seller column.
That is the thing nobody in the Twins front office wants to admit yet. They have been operating like a borderline contender. The roster does not look like one without Correa, and Lewis behind him.
The trade deadline implications are massive. Joe Ryan and Pablo Lopez immediately become two of the most valuable names available if Minnesota decides to sell. Bailey Ober follows. The Twins control all three for multiple years, which is exactly the type of pitcher contenders bid hard for.
Correa’s injury also reopens the bigger conversation about his career trajectory. He turns 32 this fall. He has been one of the better defensive shortstops in the league when healthy, but the durability problems are now a pattern. The opt-outs in his contract have expired. The Twins are paying him real money through 2028.
That contract was designed assuming he would be a 130-plus game shortstop. Now it is a question of whether Minnesota tries to find a third baseman home for him after this surgery, or whether they trust the ankle to recover.
There is no replacement on the roster. Brooks Lee can play short in a pinch. He is not Correa. He is not even an everyday shortstop yet. The Twins are going to be running out a bottom-tier shortstop the rest of the year unless they make a trade, which they have no reason to do given the standings.
For the AL Central, this changes the math. The Tigers and Royals are the two teams in front of the Twins. Neither needed help, and both just got it for free.
For Correa, this is the second major injury of his Twins tenure. The first was the plantar fascia tear that cost him most of 2023. He came back from that. He will come back from this. The question is what he looks like in 2027 at 32 with a surgically repaired ankle.
The bigger question is what Minnesota does over the next ten weeks. The honest answer is they should sell. Whether they actually do is up to a front office that has been allergic to admitting where the team really is.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
