A second swing at Carlos Correa? The Mets moved quickly and now he's NYC-bound

The Twins welcomed a Scott Boras client, outfielder Joey Gallo, to their roster on Tuesday, but baseball's most prominent agent wasn't at Target Field for the occasion. Turns out, he was busy keeping Carlos Correa a former Twin.

That probably wasn't his goal, but it was the effect of Correa and Boras' stunning decision late Tuesday night to walk away from the Giants' $350 million contract and accept one worth $315 million from the Mets instead.

Thus the Twins, who believed their $285 million offer to the shortstop had been his second-best option a week ago, fell to third place in the winner-take-all Correa Sweepstakes, right at the end. Sort of like their 2022 season.

Not that they ever had much of a chance in Tuesday's sudden do-over. Boras told the New York Times that when the Giants called off at 8 a.m. their schedulednews conference to announce Correa's signing, he called Mets owner Steve Cohen, who had publicly lamented a week earlier that his team had inquired about Correa too late in the process to get him.

By the end of the day, the sides had an agreement that will make Correa a Met for the next dozen years, though not a shortstop. With Francisco Lindor (and his own $341 million contract) already occupying the position, Correa will move to third base, displacing another former Twins shortstop, Eduardo Escobar.

"We needed one more thing," Cohen told the New York Post, which broke the story after midnight, "and this is it."

Boras told the New York Times that when the Giants asked for more time to examine the results of Correa's physical exam, already more than a week since terms of the deal were agreed to, he told them he planned to contact "other teams." Whether the Twins got a surprise call from the agent Tuesday is not publicly known — the team, through a spokesman, declined to comment — but it seems likely, given their previous bid and their positive relationship with both Correa and Boras.

Even as he vacationed in Hawaii, however, Cohen quickly made it clear he wasn't going to lose out on the 28-year-old shortstop again. The Mets' owner, negotiating directly with Boras, agreed to the Mets' eighth free-agent contract of the offseason, adding Correa to a haul that already included pitchers Justin Verlander, Jose Quintana, David Robertson and Japanese star Kodai Senga, plus the re-signing of pitchers Edwin Diaz and Adam Ottavino and outfielder Brandon Nimmo.

That brings the Mets' projected 2023 payroll to an MLB record of nearly $385 million, which will cost the team another $111 million in luxury-tax payments — a total outlay that more than triples the Twins' highest payroll ever. Yet Correa will absorb a 25.2% salary cut, dropping from the $35.1 million the Twins paid for his lone season in Minnesota to an average of $26.25 million over a dozen seasons in New York.

The Giants confirmed that Correa's medical history was the hang-up that triggered the unexpected switch, with Farhan Zaidi, president of baseball operations, saying in a statement that "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. We wish Carlos the best."

The disagreement reportedly was not over Correa's back, which cost him playing time in 2018 and 2019, but over a physical condition that developed before his baseball career.

The snag with the Giants is particularly puzzling because the Twins conducted their own extensive physical exams before Correa signed his $105.3 million, three-year contract last spring, and before they obtained insurance on the deal. Yet the team felt comfortable enough with that physical history to offer the two-time Gold Glove winner the largest contract in Twins history, by far.