BALTIMORE — The Mets are staggering towards the All-Star break and all but eliminated from NL East contention, so it’s hard to know how much of a difference Carlos Correa would have made in Queens.
Back in December, it seemed Correa was headed to the Mets, when he agreed to a 12-year, $315 million deal that led owner Steve Cohen to tell The Post’s Jon Heyman, “We needed one more thing, and this is it.”
Not much has gone right for either side since then, as that deal fell through when the Mets — as the Giants did before them — got scared off by Correa’s medicals due to an injury to his right ankle early in his career.
Correa ended up signing a new deal with the Twins, at the reduced rate of six years and $200 million and is in the midst of a disappointing season, with a .697 OPS heading into Sunday.
Minnesota, despite playing .500 baseball (42-42), entered Sunday in first place in the weak AL Central, and Correa said he’s hoping for improved play from both himself and the team in the latter part of the season.
And he insists he doesn’t have any regrets about what happened with the Mets — or thoughts about how much they have struggled in 2023.
“To be honest, I haven’t even checked their box score once, them or the Giants,’’ Correa said this weekend at Camden Yards, where the Twins faced the Orioles. “I’m the kind of guy who turns the page on things real quick. I don’t hold grudges and don’t have feelings invested in things that don’t happen, so it’s easy to move on.”
What hasn’t been easy is dealing with his disappointing start to his new deal with the Twins.
The lifetime .274 hitter is hitting just .217, and his OPS has plummeted from .850 in 2021 and .834 a year ago to .697 this season.
Correa’s walks are down and his strikeouts are up.
And his performance against the fastball has been starkly different than it was just a year ago, as his average against that pitch has dropped from .336 to .196, although advanced metrics indicate he’s hit into some bad luck.
Still, no matter how you look at it, Correa is having a rough year.
“It definitely could be a lot better and that’s what I feel like the second half is gonna be all about,’’ Correa said. “I’m gonna recover and try to help the team win a lot more games. The first half is nothing like what I expected and short of my expectations.”
But he remains content with how the offseason played out.
“I’m very happy with my decision and so is my wife, that our kids are going to grow up in Minnesota,’’ Correa said.
As for the tumultuous offseason that first saw Correa agree to a 13-year, $350 million deal, then pivot to the Mets and finally land back in Minnesota, Correa said, “There are things you can’t control and they don’t always work out the way you want them to. But you can’t [complain] about it. You’ve got to move on and look ahead.”