Apparently someone at MLB headquarters turned the stove on and accidentally left it going. On Sunday, ESPN's Jeff Passan reported that the Texas Rangers and New York Mets were finalizing a straight-up player swap of Marcus Semien for Brandon Nimmo. Semien will be taking his defensive talents to New York City, and Nimmo will be taking his whole sprinting-to-first-base-on-a-walk deal to the AL West.
This trade is also of the unc-for-unc variety, and carries the contract implications that come with such maneuvers. Semien is 35 years old and owed $72 million over the next three years; Nimmo will turn 33 the day before the Rangers' first game of 2026, and is owed $101.25 million over the next five years, which carries marginally less average annual value than Semien. Here is another characteristic of this sort of trade with older players: Name recognition aside, unless the players involved are bonafide All-Stars, the margins tend toward minutiae. As the Rangers are laden with expensive contracts, four-ish million dollars a year can play a factor in a trade between a defensively valuable second baseman and a slightly younger and a slightly more offensively productive corner outfielder. Personally—and this is just my opinion—I would take the older infielder who does not have the habit of sprinting to first base on a walk.
With margins so small, the most striking part of this trade is in its sentimental value. On one side, Semien was one of the last remnants of the 2023 Rangers squad that won the World Series and justified ownership's generous spending. Despite the team's recent struggles to even make the playoffs, you can't deny that they made the most of their one opportunity since 2017; trading Semien marks the end of an era, however short.
Meanwhile Nimmo, who signed an eight-year contract before the 2023 season, will not complete the entirety of his career as a Met, partially out of his own volition: In order for the trade to go through, Nimmo had to waive his no-trade clause. On a purely vibes-based analysis, a one-team player is becoming increasingly infrequent. (For some reason, the Wikipedia page for baseball players who spent their entire careers on one team chooses to denote Hall of Famers with a cross, like they are deceased. I thought Chipper Jones died and I somehow missed it.) I'm not quite sure what it says that two of the most notable candidates just prior to the trade were Aaron Nola and Brandon Nimmo.
All of this analysis, however, misses the most important dimension of the move: How many opportunities will Brandon Nimmo have to sprint to first base after receiving a walk in Texas? Unfortunately for Nimmo, the prospects do not look good: In keeping with how New York is more walkable city than the horrors of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the Mets' home stadium is also noticeably more walk-friendly than the Rangers'. I look forward to seeing how Nimmo adapts to these new conditions.
