It could have been worse.

Steven Matz and Carlos Correa could have been Mets.

Remember how furious Steve Cohen was that Matz made a U-turn after, in the Mets’ view, he had reached agreement with them on a three-year free-agent deal following the 2021 season, and signed with the Cardinals for four years at $44 million?

Knee and shoulder injuries limited Matz to 48 innings last season, in which he posted a 5.25 ERA. This year as a starter, Matz was 0-6 with a 5.72 ERA and .324 batting average against. Last week, he was relegated to the bullpen by the Cardinals.

Remember that brief moment this past offseason, when Cohen saw opportunity and reached agreement with Correa on a 12-year, $315 million contract that would have taken the Mets’ payroll, for luxury-tax purposes, to about $385 million. Cohen told my colleague, Jon Heyman, “We need one more thing, and this is it.” Correa was going to play third base for the Mets.

But, as also happened earlier in the offseason after Correa reached agreement with the Giants on a 13-year, $350 million deal, he did not pass a team physical. Correa, instead, signed for six years at $200 million with the Twins.

Correa entered the weekend hitting .210 with seven homers while striking out in a career-high and alarming 24.8 percent of plate appearances. The Twins had lost five straight, fallen a game under .500 and still were in first in the abysmal AL Central. Correa has been a coconspirator in an offense hitting just .229. And what will he be over time, since teams backed away from him due to long-term concerns about his back and especially right ankle?

We can take this one more step: If the Mets had their front office act together following the 2021 season, they would have made a much stronger play to lure manager Bob Melvin from the Athletics. Instead, the Padres acted swiftly to hire him, and the Mets ultimately landed Buck Showalter.

Melvin and Showalter have had similar tenures. In Year 1, with bulked up payrolls and star power, they both earned wild cards (Melvin’s Padres upset the Mets in the first round of the playoffs). In Year 2, after expanding payroll and star power further (and aggravating many in the industry), they were on the short list of most disappointing teams — the Mets began the weekend 30-33, the Padres 29-33.

In fact, of the teams with the seven largest payrolls, three were under .500 (the Phillies are the third); those three plus the Angels and Blue Jays were not in playoff position; and the two that were in postseason position, the Yankees and Dodgers, would have been wild cards.

There are still more than 3 ¹/₂ months left in the season. Perhaps the money will still rise to the top: of those five big payroll teams currently not in a playoff spot, the Padres were the furthest behind at 3 ¹/₂ games. For the Mets, maybe this will be 1973 all over again: They will stagger and stagger, but in a league beset by mediocrity, rally in the end. “Ya gotta believe!” becoming “Do ya believe?”

But this season, as much as any in recent times, is reiterating that there is no way to make your club bulletproof. I have never heard executives more concerned about having enough capable pitching, fretting what their staffs will look like in August, September and October.

Is the lost COVID minor league season fully showing up now in player development? Are more injuries occurring due to the full-throttle way pitching is mainly taught now? Is the pitch clock testing pitchers’ stamina in a greater way? Is it the need for 3-5 pitchers game after game to complete nine innings, combined with stricter rules about how many pitchers (13) can be on a staff plus how many options to the minors each player has? Is it a confluence of all of it?

Whatever the trigger, it is going to foster a greater level of chaos. It already has. Generally, the teams with winning cultures — Yankees, Dodgers, Braves, Astros, Rays — are weathering substantial injury hits, notably to their pitching. But St. Louis has lost its Cardinal Way even without the glut of rotation injuries incurred by other expected contenders.

What should be unnerving to the Mets is that they now have back basically their projected rotation minus Jose Quintana. And for one glorious turn around the fivesome, they allowed four runs in 31 ¹/₃ innings. But the Mets went just 3-2 in that period against Philadelphia and Toronto, and the starters fell apart again afterward, notably Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander in Atlanta.

A team might need just 85 or so wins to get the third wild card in the tepid NL. But it will be difficult for the Mets to get even there unless Scherzer and Verlander do way better than producing a quality start in 7 of 17 combined outings. Much has been made of their ages — Scherzer will turn 39 next month, Verlander is 40. But the Mets do not need them to be as good as they were 10 years ago. They need them to be as good and as relatively healthy as they were last season.

Trusting a rotation of any age is a devilish exercise. It was not just Matz falling out of a rotation last week. It was the announcement Jacob deGrom needs elbow surgery. It was Noah Syndergaard going on the injured list with a well-timed blister, and the worst ERA (minimum 50 innings) in the NL at 7.16. It was Matt Harvey officially retiring late last month. Those guys, plus the still excelling Zack Wheeler, could never sync good health and quality performances when they were Mets together, and they all are still younger than Scherzer and Verlander.

Imagine if Matz were with these Mets, or Correa were playing side-by-side with the also struggling Francisco Lindor. It turns out Correa would not have been “the one more thing” Cohen envisioned. That is actually Wilpon-level thinking. I remember when Johan Santana was the one more thing, followed the next year by Francisco Rodriguez being the one more thing.

The answer is never “one more thing.” The answer is always running a strong organization making one logical decision after another. The answer usually revolves around patience and not lurching from one shiny object to the next. The answer usually is a lot more boring in the offseason and much more successful when games count.