Derek Jeter Parallels Create Unfair Burden for Astros Phenom Carlos Correa

The kid was 20 years old, and in his first shot at the big leagues, he hit .234 in just 13 games.

"I'll be back eventually," he promised, the day he was sent back to the minors.

No one was asking if he was the next Derek Jeter, which would have been a funny question anyway, since he actually was Derek Jeter.

And for seemingly 20 years since, everyone in baseball has been looking for the next one.

Now it's Carlos Correa, and he's a better choice than most. He's a tall shortstop at 6'4", by all accounts a super talent and a stellar citizen. His swing can look a bit Jeter-like at times. He inspires Astros people to tell stories about the leadership skills he showed in the minor leagues. He's come up at a time when the Astros organization seems to be on the rise, just as Jeter did 20 years ago with the Yankees.

Correa even became a shortstop because his dad liked watching Jeter.

"I want to be like Derek Jeter," Carlos himself said the day the Astros made him the first Puerto Rican player to be drafted first overall. "He's awesome."

It's so tempting to say that Correa is going to be just that. It's so tempting to say that he can be everything Jeter became.

It's so unfair.

"He's got to earn things in the big leagues that he hasn't done yet," Astros manager A.J. Hinch said in a phone interview this week. "I just want him to be Carlos Correa. I just want him to be himself. All of this stuff will evolve over time, and it will happen organically.

"He's already ahead of 99 percent of 20-year-olds."

Gary Stewart/Associated Press

Including, perhaps, Jeter himself. Jeter hit .231 in his first seven games, with two extra-base hits, both doubles. Correa has a .324 average through his first seven games, and he has already hit his first two big league home runs.

It's early, but he's doing all the things the scouts have said he would, all the things fans hoped he would. He's a bigger name than Jeter was when Jeter arrived into a baseball world that didn't obsess about prospects the way we do now, and he's dealt with more pressure and expectations than the 20-year-old Jeter did.

Put it this way: You didn't need to hack into any Astros computers to find out what they thought of Correa.

His general manager, Jeff Luhnow, has called him a once-a-generation player.

"He could not only be a good major league player, he could be a great major league player for a long time," Luhnow told Jose de Jesus Ortiz of the Houston Chronicle the day the Astros promoted the kid to the big leagues.

That day, the Astros had suffered a bad loss to complete a three-game sweep in Toronto. They got to their plane to fly to Chicago and sat on the tarmac for two hours waiting to take off.

It was then that Hinch brought Jose Altuve and George Springer to the front of the plane and showed them his Monday lineup card. Correa was in it. They smiled, and quickly everyone else on the plane was smiling.

"It was a great reaction, because of the respect people here have for Carlos," Hinch said. "He's very consistent, works his tail off, asks a lot of questions and respects the veterans."

He has a knack, Astros people share, for always doing and saying the right thing. They love to point to what happened at the end of last season. Correa played at Class A Lancaster, but an injury ended his season early. He was at the Astros facility in Kissimmee, Florida, when his teammates were in the California League playoffs.

The JetHawks had missed a chance to close out their best-of-five championship series with Visalia in Game 4. Correa bought a plane ticket to California, flew across the country, surprised his teammates and declared to them, "We're going to win."

They won 10-2.

Did Derek Jeter ever do that?

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball.