Two weeks after agreeing to a 12-year, $315 million contract, Carlos Correa still isn’t officially a New York Met.
The Mets have reportedly expressed the same concern — with the shortstop’s 2014 ankle and leg injury — that forced Correa’s Giants pact to fall through.
On Thursday, The New York Post’s Jon Heyman reported that although the club’s alarm over Correa’s medical review remains, there is optimism that a deal could get finalized by the end of this week. According to Heyman, the Mets are trying to reduce their risk by adding language into the contract that make the general framework of 12 years, $315 million less guaranteed.
Wrote Heyman: “The sides still need to work out exactly how many Injured List days or other facts may allow the Mets to convert some part of the deal to non-guaranteed dollars. Depending upon how the talks unfold, the new deal may not be fully guaranteed, but could still give Correa the potential to earn about the same amount of money overall if the specific ankle injury does not lead to more issues over the length of the contract.”
Contracts with injury clauses for players with medical histories are relatively common, but there’s no precedent for a deal as long or as rich as Correa’s becoming partially guaranteed.
Heyman also reported that Correa’s agent, Scott Boras, “appears only to be talking to the Mets now, fueling the belief on the part of both sides that a deal is likely to get done with the Mets.”
The Mets signed Correa, 28, just hours after his deal with San Francisco fell through on Dec. 20. The Giants had scheduled an introductory press conference for the two-time All-Star on Tuesday, Dec. 20, but Correa’s physical examination the day prior revealed a medical issue that alarmed the front office. It’s been widely reported that the issue at hand was Correa’s 2014 injury that required surgery on a fractured fibula and ligaments. Correa hasn’t dealt with ankle problems in his eight MLB since then, but did tell reporters last September that his leg “felt numb” and was “vibrating” after a slide that he felt contacted the surgically inserted plate.
Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi sought to clarify the situation last Friday, saying that he believes both camps operated in good faith and fully intended to execute the deal. He added that the Giants organization was wholly behind the decision to back out of the agreement.
“One thing that I would want to make clear, and I think it’s really important for us as an organization that our fans hear it from me — and hopefully believe it — is our organization was totally unified every step of the way as this unfolded,” Zaidi said. “In the initial pursuit, in the negotiation, and unfortunately what happened subsequently. There was complete alignment from ownership, to the baseball group, to the business side. There was 100% alignment. Any suggestion to the contrary, that certain factions were more concerned than others, is simply untrue.”