The Mets Made a Trade for Marcus Semien; Texas Is Bringing Brandon Nimmo In

The New York Mets are trading outfielder Brandon Nimmo to the Texas Rangers in exchange for infielder Marcus Semien, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported Sunday night. You don’t often see one-for-one trades involving two players with a combined 66.9 career WAR in their past, but this deal was made possible by the combined $173.5 million owed Nimmo and Semien in the future.

The Mets and Rangers are both top-10 payroll teams and recidivist whales in the free agent market (with the caveat that the Mets are somewhat more top-payroll than the Rangers are), so this is not a straight-up salary dump. Indeed, only a trivial amount of money — $5 million moving from New York to Texas, according to Jon Heyman — is changing hands. That greases the skids, but it’s only about 5% of what Nimmo’s owed, and less than 3% of the total remaining value of the contracts being moved.

Semien and Nimmo have both been excellent players in the recent past, as reflected in their compensation. Semien is on a seven-year, $175 million contract he signed with the Rangers before the 2022 season; Nimmo had a .385 career OBP, and was coming off a 5.5 WAR season, when he signed with the Mets a year later for $162 million over eight years.

As good as both players have been in the recent past, the remaining freight on their contracts (three years, $72 million for Semien; five years, $101.5 million for Nimmo) all but certainly outstrips the on-field value they’re likely to provide going forward. Semien is 35; he’s seen his offensive output decline each of the past two seasons, and while he was a very good defensive second baseman in 2025, that’s a decline from what he was in 2023 and 2024, namely an elite defensive second baseman.

Semien also missed the last month of the 2025 season with a broken foot, though it was the result of an unlucky foul ball, rather than some chronic age-related degeneration. That’s encouraging, but when a player Semien’s age takes his first trip to the IL in eight years, it’s worth flagging no matter the cause of the injury.

Speaking of foot injuries, Nimmo was dealing with plantar fasciitis — otherwise known as Albert Pujols’ Disease — through 2024 and early 2025. Whether through foot injuries or some other mechanism, Nimmo has been hemorrhaging athleticism over the first three years of his deal. In his walk year (well, his run year, given how Nimmo takes his free passes), Nimmo had 84th-percentile sprint speed. This year, he had 44th-percentile sprint speed.

Through it all, Nimmo has played at least 151 games in each of the past four seasons, and after crossing the five-steal threshold only once in his first eight seasons, he’s 28-for-29 in stolen bases since 2024.

But the version of Nimmo the Mets signed up for in the winter of 2022 needed to be able to run. Back then, Nimmo did the most important thing a position player can do — get on base — extremely well. Sincerely, he was one of the best non-Aaron Judge, non-Juan Soto, non-space alien on-base guys on the planet.

At the same time, he’d hit 10 homers in a season only twice to that point. He had never — and still has never — hit .300 or slugged .500. His career strikeout rate was 22.3% in 2022, and it has not budged even a tenth of a point three years later.

In short, this was an average hitter — using “hitter” here to mean strictly the bat-to-ball component of the game — whose elite on-base talent made him a very good offensive player overall. If you’re paying that guy more than $20 million a year, it’d be nice to be able to use him in center field.

Nimmo was never Kevin Kiermaier, but at his peak he could at least fight center field to a draw. Not anymore, and the athleticism markers are going the wrong way. Over time, that started to cause problems for the Mets. Soto’s not a good defender in right, but even if he’d be willing to DH, the Mets were using that spot on Starling Marte. Pete Alonso probably should’ve been DHing, but he had to play first. Mark Vientos is probably a first baseman, but he had to play third. Brett Baty is a third baseman, but he had to play second. Jeff McNeil is probably a corner outfielder, but he couldn’t play there because of Nimmo and Soto.

What a headache. Even with terrific defense up the middle, the Mets ended up with the 19th-best defense overall last season. Obviously, that logjam was already starting to solve itself. Alonso and Marte are free agents, and McNeil just had surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome, which will probably end any dreams he had of being a pitcher. More to the point, McNeil will at least start the season on the IL.

Nevertheless, being tied to Nimmo in left reduces a team’s options. At the same time, Nimmo has been changing his approach to become a more conventional hitter. He’s averaged 24 home runs a year since signing his contract, but at a huge cost in OBP. Over the past two seasons, Nimmo has hit .244/.326/.418. In 2025, he posted his first single-digit walk rate since his 32-game major league debut in 2016. There are one or two additional yellow flags if you squint — a declining in-zone contact rate combined with an increasing pull rate, most notably — but I don’t want to overstate things when Nimmo is self-evidently in decline.

Qualitatively, he’s now just a normal dude, rather than the guy you can stick in front of Alonso and have him score 100 runs a year. Quantitatively, Nimmo is now a 110 wRC+ guy, rather than a 130 wRC+ guy.

Personally, I think the downside risk with five years of a declining corner outfielder is huge, especially when he starts from a 110 wRC+ baseline. The Phillies found this out when they signed Nick Castellanos to a contract that almost exactly matches what the Rangers owe Nimmo going forward.

But Nimmo clearly has a good eye, and he’s already made one major approach adjustment, and left field isn’t especially physically taxing. At any rate, he’s miles better than Adolis García, who was non-tendered on Friday, has been the past two seasons.

Semien, in addition to being two and a half years older than Nimmo, has an offensive style that has far greater risk of going to zero. Over the past two seasons, Semien has a .307 OBP, and he’s seen his power drop from 29 homers and a .201 ISO in 2023 to 15 homers and a .134 ISO in 2025. Semien’s contact rate is declining gradually — it went under 80% last season for the first time since 2020 — while he’s swinging and chasing more.

I’m not going to go as deep on Semien as I did on Nimmo, because while Peak Nimmo was an odd player, Peak Semien is much easier to understand. In 2023, Semien had a 128 wRC+ with elite defense at second base, and was worth 6.5 WAR. In 2024, he had a 101 wRC+ with elite defense at second, and was worth 4.3 WAR. In 2024, he had an 89 wRC+ with above-average defense at second, and was worth 2.1 WAR. Maybe push that last WAR total up a couple tenths to account for time missed with the broken foot.

There’s a wide, wide range of reasonable opinion on whether Nimmo or Semien is better now. All the more so if you’re talking about how the two are going to age over the next three seasons.

Me? I’d probably take Semien right now, but they’re of similar value out of context.

That said, context is why this trade got made. I’d take Semien over Nimmo for two reasons: First, I place a high value on the team-building advantage granted by having a solid, reliable second baseman. You can find a slightly above-average hitter who can stand in left field a lot more easily than a good defensive middle infielder who has a clue at the plate.

For the Mets, Semien’s a better fit. You can plug him in next to Francisco Lindor, turn a million double plays, and forget about him until October. The Rangers don’t have anything like the clutter the Mets had last year at the left end of the defensive spectrum. There’s Wyatt Langford, and then… I don’t think I’d be especially attached to either Joc Pederson or Jake Burger if push came to shove. And if Evan Carter is healthy enough to get in the lineup every day, but not healthy enough to play center, well, you can cross that bridge when you get there.

Second, the contract situation. Semien will cost the Mets $26 million this year in cash and $24 million in CBT value; Nimmo costs the Rangers $19 million a year for both, once you factor in adjustments for signing bonus and what the Mets are chipping in for processing and handling.

If I were building a team with limited resources (which the Mets might not be, to be fair), I’d rather have Semien than Nimmo because you can get out of the Semien business two years quicker, and for about $25 million less overall, than you can get out of the Nimmo business. The Rangers are paying less money year-by-year, but the Mets are paying less over the life of the contract. That comes with the obvious follow-up question: What are you going to use that savings on? How much of it will be redirected to fill other needs? This isn’t a sport where cap space is a tangible concept; every decision with a financial motive needs to be followed by, “And then what?”

That uncertainty makes this move — simple as it is — hard to judge so early in the offseason. As pessimistic as I am bout Nimmo’s long-term career path, no one can deny that the Mets’ lineup looks extremely short at the moment. By acquiring Nimmo, the Rangers replaced, and improved on, García. But do they have a plan for replacing Semien, or have they just robbed Peter to pay Paul?

Ultimately, this trade of useful players on massive contracts ought to make the path forward easier for both teams. In an ideal world, everyone walks away happy.