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MIAMI, FLORIDA – SEPTEMBER 27: Pete Alonso #20 of the New York Mets congratulates pitcher Edwin D\u00edaz #39 of the New York Mets after finishing out a game against the Miami Marlins at loanDepot park on September 27, 2025 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Calvin Hernandez\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Getty Images<\/p>\n
Like any renovation, the task of fixing the Mets began by making a mess even messier.<\/p>\n
The Mets today are not appreciably better than the Mets of Sunday, when Brandon Nimmo was still on pace to become the final player in team history to wear no. 9 and Marcus Semien was still with the Rangers.<\/p>\n
Now they\u2019ve swapped places in a trade that was officially announced Monday \u2014 and, as a pure baseball transaction, makes little sense from either side.<\/p>\n
Semien won his second Gold Glove at second base last season and will help fortify the Mets\u2019 defense (sorry, \u201crun prevention\u201d), but he posted a career-low .669 OPS and turned 35 in September as he recovered from a Lisfranc injury \u2014 his first serious injury since he missed almost half a season with a right wrist ailment in 2017.<\/p>\n
Nimmo, who turns 33 in March, played in at least 150 games for the fourth straight season and collected a career-high 92 RBIs while recording a .760 OPS (up from .727 in 2024) but appeared to decline dramatically in left field. If you\u2019re a certain age, you don\u2019t have to squint very hard to see this as an updating\/retooling\/rebooting of the Kevin Appier for Mo Vaughn trade following the 2001 season.<\/p>\n
The Rangers are also reportedly looking to pare payroll, but Semien is owed $78 million through 2028 while Nimmo will make $102.5 million through 2030. The Mets did send $5 million to Texas as part of the trade.<\/p>\n
Of course this is just the start of things for the Rangers and the Mets, so it\u2019s way too early to pass judgement on the offseason.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what the next transaction is right now, but I know we\u2019re going to keep going in the offseason,\u201d David Stearns said Monday afternoon. \u201cI\u2019m very confident we\u2019re going to have a very productive offseason.\u201d<\/p>\n
From the Mets\u2019 perspective, if you\u2019re going to renovate, you\u2019ve got to knock down some pillars. And there were few sturdier Mets pillars than Nimmo, the longest-tenured player within the organization and a top-15 player all-time per Baseball-Reference WAR.<\/p>\n
But even accounting for how obviously the Mets\u2019 core needed tinkering following last summer\u2019s slow-motion collapse, the toppling of Nimmo means it\u2019s time to survey the wreckage and wonder if the finished product is going to be an improvement on what stood there previously, flaws and all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we did last year wasn\u2019t good enough and running back the exact same group wasn\u2019t the right thing to do,\u201d Stearns said. \u201cAnd so as we went into this, we believed \u2014 and still believe \u2014 that we have to be open to anything, that we shouldn\u2019t be in a spot to take anything off the table.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than two years into Stearns\u2019 stewardship and after a series of underwhelming cosmetic repairs, it\u2019s less obvious if he\u2019s the one who can pull this off.<\/p>\n
The 59 Stearns acquisitions to play for the Mets over the last two seasons have combined for 18.7 in WAR, per Baseball-Reference. More than one-third of that WAR was produced last season by Juan Soto, who can charitably be described as a Steve Cohen pick.<\/p>\n
To borrow a phrase from predecessor Sandy Alderson, the optics haven\u2019t been great for Stearns throughout the first several weeks of the Mets\u2019 off-season. Stearns got off to a decent start Sept. 29, when he said all the right things about being accountable for the Mets\u2019 collapse.<\/p>\n
But then he oversaw a nearly complete reconstruction of the Mets\u2019 coaching staff that included the firing of pitching coach Jeremy Hefner, who survived four managers and a whopping six general manager types while helping to construct the Mets\u2019 mysterious pitching lab in Port St. Lucie.<\/p>\n
Hefner\u2019s exit served as a reminder seven starters acquired by Stearns \u2014 Clay Holmes, Griffin Canning, Sean Manaea, Paul Blackburn, Brandon Waddell, Justin Hagenman and Frankie Montas, the latter of whom Stearns chose over the New York-proven Luis Severino \u2014 combined to average barely five innings per outing over 66 starts last season. That\u2019s probably not Hefner\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n
The Mets also didn\u2019t come to terms on a new contract for first base\/baserunning coach Antoan Richardson, who was continually praised by Soto after his work with Soto turned him into a 30\/30 player who shared the NL lead in stolen bases. Figuring out a way to keep one of Soto\u2019s favorite people after year one of his 15-year deal should have been the easiest move the Mets made all winter, especially since Soto gave off a Mike Piazza-esque low-maintenance vibe during his debut season in Queens.<\/p>\n
The optics grew much worse when the Braves, who know a thing or two about constructing consistent winners, signed Hefner and Richardson. And you REALLY don\u2019t have to squint hard to see scenarios in which the Braves victimize the Mets for their first no-hitter in more than 30 years and\/or steal a whole bunch of bases in a whole bunch of wins against the Mets.<\/p>\n
The optics remain mixed this week. With Francisco Lindor due to make another $204.6 million through 2031, shedding Nimmo\u2019s contract was the most realistic budget-easing move they had. This trade should allow the Mets to improve their defense at two positions next year. Semien is two seasons removed from helping the Rangers win the World Series, well-regarded throughout baseball and struck all the right notes during his introductory Zoom Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Still, there\u2019s risk in swapping out a relatively sure thing for a promising yet unproven newcomer to the biggest market in America, And even if Semien seamlessly transitions to New York on and off the field, there\u2019s a chance Nimmo won\u2019t be the only pillar Stearns knocks down during this reconstruction.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, if we\u2019re able to put transactions together that we think make sense for the team, both now and in the future, that we have to consider them regardless of what names may be involved,\u201d Stearns said.<\/p>\n
Edwin Diaz and Pete Alonso, of course, remain free agents, and Diaz\u2019s return seems as uncertain as Alonso\u2019s. Diaz, who re-signed with the Mets before he hit free agency following the 2022 season, said earlier this month his chances of coming back to the Mets are \u201c50\/50.\u201d The Mets and Diaz are reportedly apart on the length of his next contract.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I\u2019ve said before, we\u2019d love to have Pete and Edwin back \u2014 they\u2019re both great Mets,\u201d Stearns said.<\/p>\n
Nimmo was also a great Met, but his production is far more replaceable than that of Diaz and\/or Alonso. Ask the 2025 Yankees what can happen when you whiff on a closer who isn\u2019t ready for New York\u2026or the 2019 Mets, who missed the playoffs by three games as Diaz posted a 5.59 ERA in his first season with the club and took the loss in four of his seven blown save opportunities.<\/p>\n
Alonso, meanwhile, ranks third in the bigs with 264 homers since 2019 \u2014 behind only Aaron Judge and Kyle Schwarber \u2014 while leading the majors with 712 RBIs and 1,008 games played. (Semien held the lead at 986 games before suffering his season-ending injury) <\/p>\n
Jettisoning Nimmo means the Mets might be in on Kyle Tucker and\/or Cody Bellinger, but as well-earned as their nine-figure deals will be, they\u2019ve \u201conly\u201d combined for 304 homers and 1,008 RBIs over the last seven seasons. And Bellinger\u2019s 863 games played are 122 more than Tucker, who has been sidelined by lower body injuries each of the last two seasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of offseason left,\u201d Stearns said.<\/p>\n
At this stage of Stearns\u2019 Mets renovation, that sounds as foreboding as it does promising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI, FLORIDA – SEPTEMBER 27: Pete Alonso #20 of the New York Mets congratulates pitcher Edwin D\u00edaz #39…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-315911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}