Slipped into a league-wide MLB report from New York Post insider Jon Heyman is a line about an unidentified source claiming Minnesota Twins shortstop Carlos Correa’s ankle is in bad shape.
Heyman wrote that “one doctor suggested Correa has the worst ankle he’s seen,” adding that getting $33.3 million annually from the Twins was the work of “Houdini” after Correa’s market allegedly collapsed.
It was exams on Correa’s ankle that scared away the Giants and Mets after both teams reportedly offered him gigantic contracts, allowing the Twins to slide back into the mix and sign Correa to a six-year deal worth $200 million.
“Doctors have a difference of opinions. I had a lot of doctors tell me that I was fine. I had some doctors that said it wasn’t so fine,” said Correa the day he was introduced (again) as Minnesota’s star shortstop. “It was shocking to me because since I had this surgery I never missed a game. My ankle’s never hurt.”
Correa underwent surgery on his ankle in 2014. Eight years later he’s been fine, but that wasn’t enough to keep the Giants and Mets interested at a $200 million price tag.
His agent, Scott Boras, believes the Twins felt Correa’s functional fitness outweighs the concerns that showed up on MRI scans before his deals with the Giants and Mets fell apart.
“This scenario is about a large separation in the orthopedic community about functional fitness and clinical exam versus looking at an MRI. Surgeons who don’t treat athletes but they do a lot of surgery will look at an MRI and say one thing, and the other doctors that treat patients and look at them and they find little credence in the MRIs when they’ve seen dramatic performance, particularly over an 8-year span and they’re going to reward that with functional fitness and say certain athletes have certain pain levels, certain tolerance,” said Boras.
“Many orthopedists believe there’s almost a Darwinian concept where you actually grow into a formation of your being able to compete and perform,” he continued. “It is a dramatic chasm between how some doctors feel and other doctors feel about the longevity of a player’s performance.”
Whatever the case, Correa now has to outperform the stigma of a medical professional thinking he has the “worst ankle” he’s ever seen.
