NEW YORK — Now that Steve Cohen has successfully gotten out from under his $315 million flight of fancy with Carlos Correa, there is no way of really knowing just how much of a difference the free-agent shortstop would have made for the Mets, who still need another bat. Or as one high-level baseball exec put it to me the other day: “Do you think Cohen, in his lust for a star, ever stopped to think that Correa would’ve had to hit sixth in his lineup? That he’d essentially be paying $300 million for a sixth-place hitter? That’s how insane some things have gotten in baseball.”
Of course, as another baseball exec asked a few weeks ago: “Since when did Carlos Correa become a $300 million player? What has he ever done to deserve that kind of money?”
Well, he had two more homers and five fewer RBIs than Eduardo Escobar last season. He’s played 150 games in a season once in eight years in the majors. He’s had one top 10 MVP finish — a fifth in 2021 when he won his only Gold Glove. He’s scored 100 runs once. He doesn’t steal bases. He’s had more than 30 doubles twice but never led the league in any offensive category, and last year struck out twice as many times as he walked. All of which re-affirms the selling power of Correa’s agent Scott Boras, who after two failed physicals with the Giants and Mets, still managed to get six years and $200 million from the Twins for his client.
