Yankees, Mets should test Twins’ waters for possible Carlos Correa trade

The Mets failed Carlos Correa on a physical less than two years ago. Correa was a prominent member of the 2017 Astros, the team most repugnant to the Yankees and their fans.

So, of course, I want to make a case why the Mets and Yankees should do what I strongly suspect they would never consider — ignore his cost (kind of), his injury history (sort of) and ties to the Astros (Yankees issue), and at least call the Twins and find out if they would trade Correa, and if he would agree to play third base.

“If they came at us, we’re open-minded to anything,” Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey said. “Obviously Carlos has a full no-trade clause. We love him. We’re always open-minded when team teams hit us on all of our players. We’ve been hit on Carlos before, we’ve been hit on Byron [Buxton] before, we’ve been hit on Royce [Lewis] before. That’s not shocking to anybody, but we hold an extremely high bar to even start that conversation, and I still feel like those guys are critical to our success.”

Why should the Twins consider this:

Structurally, the Twins don’t work. Their three key positional pieces — Correa, Buxton and Lewis — are injury prone. The trio started together just 26 times last year. Keeping that nucleus intact leaves Minnesota too vulnerable to playing too often without one or more of them. Correa and Buxton combined to play in just 23 of the final 39 games last season as the Twins went 12-27 and collapsed out of a playoff spot.

Financially, the Twins don’t work well. The Twins, with uncertainty about their local TV deal, slashed payroll about $30 million in 2024 to around $125 million and plan to be roughly at that level this year. But they signed Correa at a $33.3 million average for six years with the belief that payrolls would be $150 million-ish or more. Correa, Buxton and Pablo Lopez will represent nearly 60 percent of the payroll, and Correa, at $36 million in ’24, will represent nearly 30 percent by himself.