Who will have the better 2026: Marcus Semien or Brandon Nimmo?

The Braves didn’t do anything on Monday, so a non-Braves question to fill the gap.

The Mets and Rangers executed a relatively rare type of trade over the weekend, moving one productive player for another. Most trades swap some semblance of future value for present value, but occasionally, positional fit and liquidity considerations take center stage; something like that looks to have happened here.

Both Marcus Semien and Brandon Nimmo are relatively known quantities at this point. Semien is 35, has nearly 40 career fWAR, and started his 30s by alternating 6+ fWAR and 4+ fWAR seasons until a 2025 in which he substantially underhit his xwOBA and had a defensive dropoff from his best-in-class performance in 2023 and 2024. All that led to “just” a 2.1 fWAR season across 534 PAs. He’s projected for 3 WAR by Steamer, and that presumes both some decline with the bat and some defensive backsliding — but not the massive xwOBA underperformance (which no projection system is gonna touch at this point). I think that might be a bit low; Steamer always tends to heavily regress defensive performances on either end of the spectrum, and I think there’s a decent chance that his 2025 was a blip defensively rather than a new normal that will degrade with age.

Nimmo will turn 33 right around Opening Day, and has 28.0 fWAR so far in his career. He had a career high 5.5 fWAR in 2022, 4+ in 2023, and has been right around 3.0 the past two seasons. His line was buoyed by a bit of xwOBA overperformance in 2025; his xwOBA has declined year-over-year from 2023 to 2025. He’s mostly transitioned to left field in the last two years, which has hurt him value-wise because he was playing average-y center field defense previously, and is now playing average-y left field defense, which is a full win lost value-wise with the current positional adjustments. Steamer has him as right around 2.5 WAR, which I also think could be a bit low — but could be accurate if he doesn’t arrest his offensive decline and the fact that he moved to left field was reflective of continuing skills decline.

Of course, this trade isn’t just about 2026 performance. Both guys are signed long-term, and the Mets are always in the mood for a roster shuffle that allows them to fill newly-created openings with Steve Cohen’s buckets of cash. All that aside, though, who ya got for 2026?