Carlos Correa is signing a deal with the Mets this afternoon, apparently

It’s as though an old cache of Carlos Correa rumors and news dumps was discovered and needs to be offloaded before they expire.

All was seemingly quiet and the prized shortstop’s final destination was pretty much determined aside from the prickly issue of his questionable physical with the Mets.

That physical has reared its annoying head to such a gnarly degree that the Twins have found themselves back in the middle of things. With rumors of Minnesota’s chances of signing Correa growing by the hour, we are once again reminded how hard the rumor mill winds can blow and what sort of stuff it can kick up.

Ben Verlander passed along a rumor from Carlos Baerga — who was essentially passing along what John Mincone said — that Correa and the Mets would be agreeing to a deal this afternoon.

That’s where we’re at with this whole fiasco, a weird game of telephone where everyone knows something but nothing has actually been reported or made official. We’re basically living in that weird train tunnel thing from Matrix Revolutions where Neo runs through one opening but ends up right where he started.

Carlos Correa Rumors: Are Twins about to lose out to the Mets, again?

To be clear, no one is saying this won’t end up being true. It’s also a bit foolish to take anything regarding Correa at face value anymore, and the point of passing this along is to highlight the absolutely absurd levels we’ve reached with this drama.

For context, this is what Mincone tweeted out on Monday night:

For further context, this dropped about an hour before Ken Rosenthal and Dan Haynes from The Athletic reported that Correa and the Twins had accelerated contract talks amid the holdup with the Mets.

Of course, the center of this donut is exactly that — nothing at all. Correa remains a free agent and it’s impossible to predict how this thing is going to end. Minnesota storming back into the conversation in what might be the 11th hour apparently needs to be taken more seriously than even Twins fans initially thought, but that’s really the only development.

Scott Boras might still be using the Twins to play hardball with the Mets, Minnesota is clearly still interested and in the running to reunite with Correa, and we don’t seem to be any closer to this thing wrapping up than we were when Correa agreed to terms with the Giants a month ago.

But what’s a baseball offseason without a little Hot Stove rumor action to keep us warm in the winter?