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Houston Astros call up top prospect Carlos Correa

Ring the bells. Call your friends and neighbors. Hug your children. Maybe buy some tickets on a red eye to Chicago. The longest three year wait of your life is over a last.

By Brian Stevenson
Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Quite literally, too; three years and three days after drafting Carlos Correa with the number one overall pick of the 2012 MLB draft, the Astros have called up their 20-year-old uber-prospect. Correa will join the club for the start of their series against the Chicago White Sox, and will presumably be in the starting lineup.

Correa rose quickly through the system after being drafted, hitting at every level as the hype around him built. He exploded out of the gate this season, scorching the Texas League to the tune of of a .385/.459/.726 batting line. Correa earned himself a promotion after just 29 games. Impressive enough, but almost absurd, considering his age, and the fact that he lost a large portion of his 2014 season to a bone fracture in his leg.

But hit he did, despite those odds. He was arguably the best hitter in all the minors, and his stock rose from being one of the top five prospects in baseball to being the top prospect in the eyes of several evaluators. Reality began to overtake hype, and it was clear he was just months, or weeks, from the Majors. Though GM Jeff Luhnow was somewhat evasive about it, the publicly-assumed target time was sometime in early June, once the Super Two deadline had passed. The timing certainly appears to dovetail perfectly with those assumptions.

To make room on the 25-man roster, right-hander Jake Buchanan has been optioned back to AAA Fresno, after serving for several weeks as the Astros' long man out of the bullpen. Correa is not on the 40-man roster, so an additional move will need to be made prior to tomorrow's game.

The move comes just hours after Jonathan Villar was involved in a stunningly-odd play during the ninth inning of Sunday's game against the Blue Jays. After colliding with Jays' shortstop Jose Reyes, who occupied second base at the time, Villar fell to the ground, failing to field a pop-up off the bat of Jose Bautista. Bautista would go on to score the winning, walk-off run for the Blue Jays soon after. The Astros have stated that Villar's play this year did not factor into their decision.

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