Waiting on Carlos Correa news is a relatively good problem to have

If you’ve been paying attention to the Mets over the past couple of weeks, you’re certainly familiar with the biggest updates on the team’s potential signing of infielder Carlos Correa. Less than twenty-four hours after Correa was going to be introduced as a member of the San Francisco Giants, the Mets agreed to a twelve-year contract with him as the Giants nixed the deal over concerns that arose during his physical regarding an ankle injury that the 28-year-old had suffered in his time in the minors.

The Mets’ deal with Correa was contingent upon a physical, too, and like the Giants, the team had concerns about the old ankle injury. Since then, there has been no significant news, and since Jon Heyman reported some details regarding negotiations earlier this week, there have been no additional updates.

Whether the situation brings to mind the words of Samuel Beckett or Tom Petty, if you’re a Mets fan, this is a relatively good problem to have. Whether or not the team makes finalizes an official deal with Correa, it will have had a very good offseason—something that would have been unthinkable following the departure of Jacob deGrom had the Mets not been willing to spend significant money on good free agents.

To recap the events of December that followed the deGrom departure, the Mets signed Justin Verlander and José Quintana, traded for Brooks Raley, signed Brandon Nimmo to an eight-year deal, signed David Robertson, Kodai Senga, Omar Narváez, and Adam Ottavino, and traded James McCann away to the Orioles. And they made a few fringe major league moves that could prove useful, too.

Correa agreed to his thirteen-year deal with the Giants between the Mets’ Senga and Narváez signings, and while there were reports that the Mets expressed interest in him shortly before the news of his signing with San Francisco broke, it didn’t feel like a punch to the gut at the time. The team already had a great offseason under its belt, and it seemed inevitable that some of the best players in the game would sign with teams that weren’t the Mets.

Once things fell apart with the Giants and the Mets swooped in to get him, though, that outlook changed rather significantly. Steve Cohen had already made it crystal clear that things have changed for the better, and just being a Mets fan felt surreal in the wake of that news. If the Mets don’t end up with Correa now, it will feel quite a bit more disappointing than it did the first time around. But if that is the case, at least the team will still have had a very, very good offseason, and we would have to assume that the Mets will always be in on top-tier free agents moving forward.