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The free agent market in Major League Baseball has been very busy in the lead-up to the new year. Big names like Jacob DeGrom, Justin Verlander, Cody Bellinger, Justin Turner, Carlos Rodon, Xander Boegarts, Dansby Swanson and more have all changed teams.
One of those big name free agents, Carlos Correa, has changed teams… twice, sort of.
After basically announcing that they had signed the All-Star shortstop to a deal worth $350M over the next 13 years, the San Francisco Giants chickened out.
Six days later and Carlos Correa was in a New York Mets uniform with a 12 year, $315 million contract in hand.
So what happened?
The Giants were literally all set to hold an introductory press conference for Correa on Tuesday. Then, about three hours before its scheduled time they postponed it.
The next day he had signed with the Mets.
Again, what happened?!
The Giants said they were postponing the introductory press conference because they were awaiting the results of some testing.
Correa had even already gotten dressed for the press conference.
That testing resulted in something the team didn’t like and, boom, Correa was gone.
At least Carlos Correa was a Giant longer than Aaron Judge was.
Aaron Judge was a Giant for 6 minutes.
Carlos Correa was a Giant for 6 days.
— Barstool Baseball (@StoolBaseball) December 21, 2022
On Wednesday, NBC Sports Bay Area finally shed a little more light on what happened.
While Correa missed time early in his MLB career with a back injury, multiple league sources said the Giants had concerns about an ankle injury he suffered while in the minor leagues. In 2014, when he was a 19-year-old prospect with the Houston Astros, Correa injured his leg on a slide into third base in a High-A game. The Astros later announced that he underwent surgery on a fractured right fibula and a ligament.
It’s not unusual for old injuries to concern teams during physicals, but it’s rare that deals aren’t completed because of something seen during testing, and it’s unprecedented for a deal of this magnitude to be shut down. The Giants, having already scheduled a press conference and advertised tickets using Correa’s image, saw enough that they felt they needed to hit the pause button.
The Mets, on the other hand, apparently had no qualms whatsoever about spending over $300 million on Carlos Correa.
Interestingly, Correa’s agent Scott Boras said, “You’re talking about a player who has played eight major league seasons. There are things in his medical record that happened decades ago. These are all speculative dynamics.
“Every team has a right to go through things and evaluate things. The key thing is, we gave [the Giants] medical reports at the time. They still wanted to sign the player and negotiated with the player.”
Until they didn’t.