Upon further review, the immaculate interception of December 21, 2022, has been overturned.
The Mets swooping in and plucking Carlos Correa out of the air proved too good to be true. Or maybe, if you’re an adherent of The Best Deals Are The Ones You Never Finalized school of thought, it will turn out to be good Carlos Correa never truly became a Met. Whatever it was once he was examined thoroughly that gave first the Giants then the Mets hundreds of millions of dollars worth of pause will be the Twins’ concern for the next six years, maybe more, pending whatever has to happen to prove a high-priced superstar is physically fit to have lucrative vesting options kick in. Good luck, Carlos. We hardly knew ye — or yer right ankle.
While the details of why what almost happened didn’t happen will likely be juicy, the Mets will now look to squeeze out of their current third basemen (or whoever else emerges in the weeks and months ahead) 162 games’ of sound defensive play and solid offensive production. For the moment, that corps projects primarily as incumbent Eduardo Escobar and prospect Brett Baty. You could do worse for pre-Spring depth-charting. A desire to do better was the impetus for going after Correa, but that ship, replete with its allegedly routine physical, has sailed. We’re back to Square One. If this team as it is is what this team will actually be, Square One won’t be so bad.
In the meantime, take a seat, Norihiro Nakamura, the infielder from Japan who was all but signed, sealed and delivered to Flushing twenty winters ago until he backed out of succeeding San Francisco-bound Edgardo Alfonzo at the hot corner. Nakamura represented one of the closest-ever calls within the realm of players who seemed an absolute lock to become a Met yet didn’t. Still, I think we have a new starting third baseman for the all-time Never Mets squad.
National League Town remembers the Carlos Correa Era in all its glory and brevity. You can listen here or on your podcast platform of choice.
So does Carlos now qualify as a Mets ghost? Or not, because he never technically was on the roster? All I can say is, it must be a pretty serious problem, as this was one of the weirdest ever deals that didn’t get made. Hopefully not a “Correa-ending” injury!
He’s a Never Met, as indicated in the final paragraph — a player heavily speculated to the point of reported as a fact that he’s becoming a Met, yet doesn’t.
I never met a Never Met I didn’t like.
Reminds me of when the Mets drafted Kumar rocker out of Vanderbilt. The $6 million signing bonus was contingent on him releasing his medical records, which he refused to do. The Mets nixed the deal. Hmmmmmmm…. His agent? Scott boras…….
Boras loves to embellish and leak. That’s part of his job. But he needs a good relationship with Steve more than the reverse. Sooner than later, we’ll be glad this didn’t work out.
Thrilled this didn’t happen. Never liked Correa and happy to take chances with opening for Baty and, who knows, Vientos. And: We are already mocked as the new Evil Empire and Correa vastly added to that but now…poof, gone. Less evil, but maybe still empire.
That’s a whole lot of $$ better spent elsewhere.
I have a feeling we dodged a bullet here. And I like Baty. Escobar too. Be interesting to see how this plays out in the long run.
I like Correa as a player, but I’m glad this didn’t happen. I keep thinking about Keith Hernandez talking last year about how much he likes Baty’s swing (even though he didn’t exactly tear up the pea patch in his short time in the majors). Hopefully this will turn out as well for the Mets as the non-trade for Carlos Gomez back in 2015 did.
Keith said the same thing about Conforto’s swing. Which unfortunately displaced a lot of air, but not baseballs.
So happy this deal fell through. There must really be something wrong with this guy, besides his Games-Played percentage.
Plus, he’s a good friend of our overpaid SS, which means he might be a creep, like Baez.
LGS! (Let’s Go Spend!)
Great I never wanted The Cheat in the 1st place. And, before anyone asks, ideally Escobar wouldn’t be here either. However, CC was clearly a main player in the scandal and thats why I’m so anti him
Didn’t we reject Vlad Guerrero for health reasons before he went on to glory elsewhere? Just sayin’.