NEWSLETTER
It’s now been two weeks since the New York Mets swooped in to theoretically sign Carlos Correa out from under the San Francisco Giants, who’d developed concerns about Correa’s surgically-repaired left leg after the pre-signing physical. Correa and his agent Scott Boras did not want to renegotiate the terms of their 13-year, $350 million agreement with the Giants, so they quickly pivoted to the Mets at 12 years and $315 million. Then the Mets flagged the same issue, and it’s been silence ever since.
There is still no indication that Correa and Boras are going to shop around, so it stands to reason that the particulars of a deal are being worked out behind the scenes.
Ken Rosenthal spoke on The Athletic Baseball Show about exactly that, and said that the expectation is that, when a deal gets finalized, it will look “dramatically different” than the originally-agreed 12 years and $315 million guaranteed:
The Mets know that Correa and Boras cannot go back out on the market with two flunked physicals and expect to get over $300 million. It just won’t happen. So they can push really hard to make this deal look very different when all is said and done, but Rosenthal cautions that you don’t want to bring the hammer down TOO hard because you still want to have a good relationship with the player. A happy player is a more productive player and all that. (Also, again, Correa and Boras will have a grievance lined up if the deal is altered too much, thanks to Steve Cohen’s public comments about the signing before it was official.)
In the end, it remains most likely that the deal gets worked out and *CAN* reach 12 years and $315 million, but it’s probably going to be an absurdly complex web of team and player and vesting options, incentives and escalators, and insurance coverage.
