“That’s my dream, ever since I got here,” Correa said. “If we can win the World Series, that will make me very happy and cement my legacy as a world champion in two different organizations.”
It’s what drives him. It’s what gets him out of bed in the morning.
That’s the kind of talk you’d expect from a cerebral but tenacious competitor like Correa, and it begs a question: how many players have led multiple teams to a World Series win?
We’re not just talking about role players here: how many bona fide studs—All-Stars and MVP vote-getters—have changed franchises and brought both to the promised land?
I looked through the rosters of the World Series winners since 2000 to find players who were both great and established leaders for the teams they won it with. Those parameters give us seven position players who accomplished Correa’s dream.
They all put up at least 5 rWAR (what I broadly defined as “great”), although not necessarily in the seasons they won the World Series in. Here’s the list: Mike Lowell, Johnny Damon, Shane Victorino, Ben Zobrist, Mookie Betts, Corey Seager, and Freddie Freeman.
Seven may seem low, but it’s like the “Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are the only two starting QBs to win a Super Bowl with multiple franchises” stat; if a team has a guy good enough to deliver them a championship, they tend to keep that player, perhaps forever, but at least untul they’re no longer capable of carrying a team that far.
With all due respect to Lowell, Damon, Victorino, and Zobrist—all tremendous and deeply memorable players—they aren’t quite what we’re looking for.
They were ancillary players—necessary pieces to win the Whole Darn Thing—but to say they “led” their teams to championships is like saying George Harrison “led” The Beatles to 20 No. 1 hits. While “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun” are some of the band’s finest work, Lennon and McCartney were the engines of the car.
That leaves us three guys tied to the Dodgers: Betts, Seager, and Freeman.
I don’t think Freeman works here. That Dodgers team was stacked. As critical as he was, especially in the Series itself, I can’t use him.
Betts is a more compelling character because, in 2020, L.A. was simply a very good team, not the world-conquering leviathan of talent they are now.
There’s something almost folksy to the fact that AJ Pollock was their starting left fielder. The next-best player on that team was Cody Bellinger, but Bellinger was in the beginning of his decline at that point, so Betts comes out on top. It’s a similar story for his 2018 win with Boston; J.D. Martinez was incredible that year, but Betts was basically prime Roberto Clemente (who kind of won with two different teams himself; the core of the 1960 Pirates had entirely turned over by 1971, except for him). That’s not a bad example for Correa to follow.
We can go even further. For the most accurate comparison, I think Seager takes the cake—ironic, given that the two are juxtaposed by the infamous 2017 World Series.
Anyway, the youngest of the three Seagers (yes, there’s even another out there), reached the mountaintop in 2020 with Betts’s Dodgers and jumped ship to the Rangers after the 2021 season, eventually leading them to their first World Series win in 2023.
They both play shortstop. Like Correa, Seager signed with a team outside the Big 5 (Dodgers, Mets, Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox), and as Correa would, he holds a special place in a fan base’s collective heart as a result.
I think if there’s anything to take away from this, it’s that what Correa is attempting to do is rare, but not unheard of. A handful of very good players have won championships with multiple teams; a trio did so under the pressure of being more or less the main character; and one accomplished this while jumping down a tier in market size. As always, there’s plenty of great history in the process of being written.
Correa absolutely could become the next in a short line of exceptional players claiming multiple rings with different logos on them.
