It’s been a public relations disaster, and it seems to keep somehow getting worse with each subsequent report.
The latest comes from Alex Pavlovic, who has gotten to the bottom of what exactly scared the Giants off of Carlos Correa during his physical. The report is a bit of a shock.
It wasn’t a back issue that flared up for Correa in 2019 that concerned the Giants, but rather an ankle injury he sustained in 2014 when he was a minor leaguer. No, we’re not kidding. Via Pavs:
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.
This report is so unbelievable, it seems to square with Marty Lurie’s take that the Giants are using an issue with the physical as an excuse because they got cold feet. If Correa’s ankle injury from nearly a decade ago was a problem, presumably it would’ve affected his status as the top MLB prospect at the time, or perhaps affected him during the last eight seasons as one of the best shortstops in Major League Baseball.
It’s also somewhat telling that the Mets and Twins didn’t seem to have an issue with the ankle, as both offered Correa lucrative deals.
Here’s what Lurie said about the alleged Correa injury issues:
“They wanted Correa all along. He was their guy, they targeted him. So to say they didn’t have his medical records, they didn’t know, all this kind of stuff, I don’t believe it at all. He was a free agent last year. His records are available. They are his records. All you have to do is say ‘look, before we make this deal for $350 million, we wanna see all the medical records.’ And if they didn’t do that, then again it’s a rookie mistake and they didn’t do their due diligence in looking at his background.”
It will be fascinating to see what the Giants say whenever they decide to get in front of the camera and address all of this.