On Tuesday afternoon, about two hours after the
Giants postponed a press conference to introduce new shortstop Carlos Correa, Correa’s agent Scott Boras pulled out his phone and sent a message to
Mets owner Steve Cohen.
“Correa-mas may have come early!” Boras told
The Athletic he texted Cohen. “You have a minute?”
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Boras was typing from San Francisco, where he had come to attend the event with his client. Cohen received the note in Hawaii, vacationing after authorizing an offseason spending spree of roughly $500 million. The cost had not slaked Cohen’s zeal for improvement. When San Francisco agreed to a 13-year, $350 million contract with Correa on Dec. 13, Cohen and Boras had engaged in discussions about the two-time All-Star shortstop. Cohen could not hide his disappointment in missing out. He felt he had arrived late to the party.
By reaching out again, Boras wanted Cohen to know it was not too late.
The circumstances were not exactly miraculous. Correa became available only because the Giants sought more time to analyze medical records before finalizing the agreement. Boras returned to the market — and returned to Cohen. He connected with the owner and Mets general manager Billy Eppler over the phone on Tuesday afternoon. Boras said he negotiated with Cohen deep into the night. As Cohen sipped a martini with his dinner, Boras asked if the drink included three olives for a star third baseman.
Because that is what Cohen, in
agreeing to a 12-year, $315 million contract with Correa, will now have to pair with shortstop Francisco Lindor. The terms of the contract remain dependent on a physical examination. The melodrama with the Giants, which served as a capstone for the team’s bitter winter, has shown that cannot be considered a formality. But Cohen’s willingness to discuss the contract publicly — “We needed one more thing, and this is it,” Cohen told Jon Heyman of the New York Post — left rival executives doubtful the Mets would backtrack. The late-night negotiating happened unbeknownst to many Mets officials, who awoke on Wednesday morning as bewildered as the sporting public, as relayed in conversations with
The Athleticafter the initial shock of the signing subsided.
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“I thought it was a dream,” one team official said. “You wake up and you’ve got a fantasy lineup.”
For the Giants, the outcome resembled a nightmare. The franchise already missed out on Aaron Judge, who spurned their overtures and stayed with the
Yankees. In Correa, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi found a sublime backup plan, a former Platinum Glove winner who averaged 24 home runs with an .842 OPS during the past two seasons. Correa looked like San Francisco’s new face of the franchise. He will now serve as a symbol of a misspent offseason.
The team has not commented on the stunning reversal, other than issuing a two-sentence statement from Zaidi. “While we are prohibited from disclosing confidential medical information, as Scott Boras stated publicly, there was a difference of opinion over the results of Carlos’ physical examination,” Zaidi’s statement read. “We wish Carlos the best.”
The Mets were not the first in line for Correa’s services. The team opened the winter with other priorities. With Jacob deGrom, Chris Bassitt and Taijuan Walker all entering free agency, Cohen and Eppler needed to rebuild a rotation. After deGrom bolted for a $185 million deal with
Texas, the Mets countered with a two-year, $86.7 million contract for three-time American League Cy Young award winner Justin Verlander, followed by $26 million for Jose Quintanaand $75 million for Kodai Senga at the Winter Meetings. The team also filled a hole in center field by reuniting with Brandon Nimmo to the tune of eight years and $162 million.
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For most owners, that might have been enough. Cohen, a hedge-fund manager who bought the club from the Wilpon family in 2020, does not operate like most owners. He implored team officials to ponder options for improving the offense. That could have come in the form of low-risk deals with free-agent hitters like J.D. Martinez, Justin Turner or Michael Conforto. There were trades to pursue.
And then, of course, there was Correa. As the Winter Meetings wrapped up, he remained the best player still on the board. Two other elite shortstops had signed decade-long deals. After Trea Turner inked an 11-year, $300 million contract with
Philadelphia, Boras negotiated Xander Bogaerts’s 11-year, $280 million pact with
San Diego. Correa is younger than both of those players. Many evaluators considered him the best bet among the trio. So the price would be steep.
The Mets did not exactly need a shortstop. Lindor was about to enter the second season of a 10-year, $341 million deal. Lindor had expressed his affinity about Correa to team officials. If Correa was willing to move off shortstop, there might be a fit.
For the Mets, though, the problem was the timing. By the time Cohen and Boras entered into discussions, the Giants were closer to a winning bid. On Dec. 13, less than two hours after
The Athletic reported about Cohen’s interest in Correa, Correa agreed to the initial deal with San Francisco. “We got there late,” Cohen told The Post.
All that stood between Correa and a decade-plus tenure in the Bay Area was a physical. That did not take place immediately. It is not uncommon for a gap to exist between agreement and examination. Judge agreed to his nine-year, $360 million contract with the Yankees on Dec. 7, took a vacation in Hawaii and only upon his return did he undergo a physical. The Yankees named him team captain at a press conference on Wednesday, a full two weeks after the initial agreement.
In the days after Correa and the Giants struck a deal, Boras attended press conferences for other clients in New York and Boston, all while negotiating a six-year, $162 million contract for Carlos Rodon and the Yankees. Then he traveled to San Francisco, where the Giants intended to unveil their new shortstop. It was supposed to be a coronation. “When that came out, that he had signed, I was like, ‘Holy cow,’” Giants pitcher Logan Webb told MLB Network Radio on Dec. 19.
Correa underwent his physical on Monday, according to people familiar with the situation. After reviewing the results, the Giants informed Boras on Monday night they were postponing the press conference. The team did not announce the postponement until late Tuesday morning on the West Coast.
In Minneapolis, the
Twins were preparing a media session with new outfielder Joey Gallowhen team officials learned about the Correa postponement. Minnesota had been keen to keep Correa around after a fruitful partnership in 2022, but declined to out-bid San Francisco. The team was willing to re-engage, even as the Associated Press reported that the Giants were balking at a medical issue. The Twins had a solid understanding of Correa’s medical history, having just employed him. And the team had still been willing to make a 10-year, $285 million offer.
In the minors, Correa had undergone arthroscopic surgery to repair a fractured right fibula and minor ligament damage. He had not been sidelined by right leg issues in the majors, but he dealt with back problems that led to stints on the injured list in both 2018 and 2019. Correa played in 148 games with
Houston in 2021 and 136 games as a Twin this past season.
As executives across the sport tittered about what the examination of Correa could have turned up, Boras informed the Giants he intended to negotiate with other teams if San Francisco did not execute the initial letter of agreement by the early afternoon. There were no further discussions between the two sides, according to people familiar with the situation. Boras did reconnect with Cohen. The owner looped in Eppler. The gears were turning toward another seismic contract for the Mets.
But that was not the only track upon which Boras operated. He also contacted the Twins, according to people familiar with the situation. The presence of the Mets gave Boras leverage. If Minnesota wanted Correa, Boras conveyed, the team needed to improve its earlier offer – even though Correa appeared compromised with the Giants. The Twins would not have advanced the conversation without investigating the potential issues caused by Correa’s physical. The team did not intend to increase its bid beyond 10 years and $285 million. So Boras stuck with the man in Hawaii.
Separated by a three-hour time difference and the Pacific Ocean, Boras and Cohen hammered out the details. Boras operated out of his San Francisco hotel room. Correa understood that he would need to shift to third base to become a Met. The position change did not dampen his enthusiasm, Boras explained. When a deal was agreed upon – somewhere around 3:15 a.m. in New York, 12:15 a.m. in San Francisco and 9:15 p.m. in Hawaii – Boras grabbed his client. Correa had been staying down the hall. Upon hearing the offer from the Mets, Boras said, Correa tackled his agent and tossed him across the bed. “C4,” Boras said, noting Correa’s uniform number, “is explosive.”
“He was excited,” Boras added, “about being a Met.”
The latest splurge pushed Cohen’s free-agent tab to roughly $806.1 million, raising the team’s luxury tax payroll for 2023 to $495 million. Cohen was willing to zoom past the highest luxury-tax threshold, which colloquially bears his name as the “Cohen Tax.” At this rate, Cohen will pay more in penalties than the respective payrolls of 10 teams.
“I mean this in the most respectful way possible, but it’s Steve Cohen,” one Mets official said. “He’s shown he’s an absolute madman when it comes to doing what it takes to win.”
The rest of the sport could only gawk at his audaciousness. “All I could think about when I saw the news,” one rival executive said, “was Cohen at some point must’ve saw what teams like the Phillies and Padres were doing and said to himself, ‘OK, watch this.’”
On Wednesday morning, Mets manager Buck Showalter woke up to a text from Eppler. “Call me,” the message read. Showalter walked into the kitchen of his home in Dallas. His son, Nathan, and his daughter, Allie, were in town. Showalter had been gearing up to celebrate the holidays with his children and his four grandsons. As he came in for breakfast, he saw his wife, Angela, looking at her phone.
“Did you guys sign Correa?” she asked.
“Not that I know of,” Showalter said.
“I think you did,” she said.
Showalter soon heard the news. He could experience the same phenomenon hinted at by Boras the day before. Correa-mas — whatever that exactly means — had come early. And it meant Carlos Correa, two days after his career-long deal with San Francisco fell through, would be a Met.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Smith Collection, Mike Stobe, Al Bello / Getty Images)
