The free agent market is moving, and the New York Mets need to be working diligently at keeping one of their own. With the consensus top two bats on the market, Aaron Judge and Trea Turner, both signing in the last two days, Brandon Nimmo becomes a focal point from the free agency pool. The pressure is on the Mets to find a way to get it done.
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New York Mets must find a way to keep Brandon Nimmo:
If you were to subtract Nimmo from this lineup and replace him with one of the rumored options the Mets could look to replace him, Kevin Kiermaier, there is no way around it, the Mets lineup takes a clear, bad hit for the worse. This is also to a batting order that struggled mightily down the stretch of the 2022 season and was the main cause of the Mets not taking the NL East.
Without Nimmo, one could very well argue the Mets lineup across the board is nowhere near good enough for a baseball team with World Series expectations. You could take things even further and say on paper this is a bad batting order.
There are undoubtedly concerns with Nimmo and paying him a big contract. He perhaps does not offer the Mets with the power their lineup needs. Prior to this year, he had never played over 150 games in a season. He does have his cold stretches at the plate as well.
All that being said, the alternatives to Nimmo, while his price tag will be a fortune over the long term, simply make the Mets a worse roster. Something they cannot afford as a win-now team.
The strengths Nimmo provides to the Mets are also undeniably valuable. For starters, he is a homegrown player with 12 years a part of the organization. He is still a young player, turning 30 in March, coming off a career year, and should be entering his prime years.
At the top of the lineup, Nimmo is always good for working counts and getting on base. He also has a solid career batting average of .269. In center field, Nimmo showed some terrific improvement in 2022. Lastly, he is a core, key member to the clubhouse of the Mets.
All of these variables make Nimmo well worth the investment over five-plus years at this point in time. Added with the fact, there is no replacement out there remotely capable of providing what Nimmo does at the plate for a lineup that needs to be better.
In the end, it’s simple. While his market is obviously robust, and it will be a challenge, the Mets need to find a way to sign Nimmo.