Carlos Correa not looking back on free agency saga with Mets in Minnesota
MINNEAPOLIS — Carlos Correa doesn’t think about what could have been. The Minnesota Twins shortstop hasn’t thought about what he might look like in blue and orange, he hasn’t wondered what it would be like to play with fellow Puerto Rican Francisco Lindor and he hasn’t really thought about what it would be like for his family in New York. At least, not now, not when the Twins are playing good enough to run away with the AL Central title.
Correa has paid such little attention to the team that he nearly signed with last December that he didn’t even realize the Mets had fallen out of playoff contention.
“I didn’t know that,” Correa said Friday at Target Field before the Twins opened a weekend series against the Mets. “They’ve got a great team over there.”
Maybe it could have been even better had Correa and the Mets finalized the 12-year, $315 million contract they agreed to right before Christmas. Correa’s surgically repaired right ankle gave the Mets enough pause that it derailed the deal, much like it had with the San Francisco Giants.
In the end, all parties may be better off where they are right now. Correa has struggled this season, but he’ll at least get a chance to turn things around in the postseason and he won’t have to worry about the storylines of a potential Mets-Twins World Series. The Mets entered a resetting period at the trade deadline, one that they anticipate will go through next season, and long-term contracts aren’t ideal for a team in that type of phase.
“I don’t look back at it at all,” Correa said. “I’m a guy that moves on pretty quickly. It didn’t come to fruition and I moved on. Now, I’m here with the Minnesota Twins. We’re in a good spot, so I’m really happy with the way this is going so far.”
Going into the weekend, Correa owned a suboptimal .229/.310/.396 slashline with a .705 OPS and 17 homers. He’s grounded in 29 double plays this season, which leads the AL. He isn’t getting the ball in the air at the same rate he used to and he isn’t barreling balls the way he did earlier in his career in Houston.
The right ankle has held up just fine, but the 28-year-old has also battled a heel injury and plantar fasciitis in his left foot this season.
“The season hasn’t gone, for me personally, as I’ve wanted to,” he said. “There’s no excuse. It’s just how it’s gone. But at the same time, the way I look at it is, that I have to keep working on my swing and try to get to where I want to be to help down the stretch. And hopefully, you know, once we get to the playoffs, we get hot at the right time.
“But at the end of the day, the Twins signed me to win championships, not to win personal accolades.”
Correa’s offseason workouts were completely disrupted by free agency. A deal with the Giants, a deal with the Mets and eventually, a deal with the Twins had him traveling all over the country to see doctors and undergo physical examinations. He wasn’t able to work out the way he typically would.
His wife, Daniella, was also pregnant with the couple’s second child. Nothing was normal or routine and their future was up in the air.
“It was weird with all the traveling and all the physicals and all of that,” Correa said. “But it had to happen that way. That’s the way it was meant to be.”
Correa isn’t blaming his strange winter for his down numbers this season.
“You’ve got to figure out a way to use go out there and perform for your team, right?” Correa said. “Yeah, the offseason was very different from what I’ve done the past 12 years. But I need to learn how to how to deal with things like that in the offseason. So it’s taking me a little more time, but right now I’m feeling good.”
This series wasn’t exactly looming large for Correa. It wasn’t one that he had in the back of his mind. If anything, he was looking forward to it to be able to reconnect with Francisco Lindor, his friend and fellow Puerto Rican shortstop.
With Correa signed to play in the Twin Cities for another five years, the winter debacle is now nothing more than something to laugh about.
“Now that I’m here, I look back and I can tell the story to a lot of people,” Correa said. “I feel like everybody that I talked to wants to know a little bit of the background of what happened that winter because it was probably the first time in MLB history that a player signed three deals in a week.”
