HOUSTON (SportsRadio 610)- Carlos Correa makes the same request before every Astros road trip: He wants the hotel room next to Martin Maldonado's.
"I like to sit down with him and talk shop and talk baseball," Correa said Wednesday. "He's a very smart baseball guy.
Before the Astros played the Oakland Athletics in last year's American League Division Series, Correa went to Maldonado's room and found him watching video of his team's opponent. The Astros lost 7-of-10 games to the A's in the regular season, but Maldonado was determined to turn around his team's fortunes.
"They're not going to beat me this time," Maldonado told his teammate.
From the time the Astros clinched the Wild Card Series against the Twins to the start of the Division Series Maldonado spent at least four hours a day on his computer compiling scouting reports on Oakland's hitters and he relayed his confidence to Correa.
"I got the scouting report down, we're going to beat them."
The Astros did beat their American League West rivals, and even with the ball flying out of Dodger Stadium, Maldonado and the Astros pitching staff limited the formidable Oakland lineup to just 22 runs over four games. The matchup against the A's wasn't personal for Maldonado, but the individual batter vs pitcher matchups were and are whenever he squats behind the dish.
"I feel like it is my job to present to my pitchers the best position to succeed. I take a lot of pride (in my scouting reports). I'd rather catch a 1-0 game winning than losing by eight and go 4-for-4."
In a lineup littered with all stars, Maldonado has proven to be indispensable. At 35-years old he started 118 games behind home plate in 2021, third most in all of baseball, and no catcher has started more games than him the last two seasons. He may have only posted a .183 batting average over that two year stretch with a 69 OPS+, but that's not where his value to the team comes through.
"You cannot replace what a guy like Maldy brings to the table," Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. said. "It's not going to show up in the stat sheets. It's not going to show up on the back of a baseball card. There's no metric really to show how valuable he is, but he's the glue of our team. He's one of the main leaders of our clubhouse."
When McCullers delivers the first pitch of Thursday's game one to White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson at 3:07 pm it will be whatever Maldonado calls, just like most of the pitches he's thrown since returning from Tommy John Surgery, and even before he became an Astro, McCullers wanted him.
"In 2017, we were playing the Angels, A.J. (Hinch) was here. I watched Maldy catch, and I've always been nudging A.J., 'We've got to get that guy. We've got to trade for that guy'. I just love the way he plays. I just feel like he's an animal out there. His demeanor, it goes a long way."
The Astros traded for Maldonado in 2018, and then again at the deadline in 2019. Now, if McCullers has anything to do with it, he'll never leave.
"He has this aura around him. He's a special guy to have as your backstop, and he brings a lot to this team."
