FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Carlos Correa had been feeling great -- really, he felt spectacular. At the end of a long season, he had been working out without issues, even playing tennis with his sister, as he waited to see how his free agency played out. And so he is the first to acknowledge: The collapse of the record-setting $350 million deal with the San Francisco Giants was a stunner. Correa had assumed that passing the Giants' physical examination was a fait accompli. "I'm like, 'Easy money,'" Correa recalled.
Then, after the Giants' retreat, New York Mets owner Steve Cohen swooped in with a $315 million offer -- but that, too, disintegrated, over doctors' doubts about the leg injury nearly a decade old.