Ok Mets fans, I know what you’re thinking.

Why wouldn’t Sandy Alderson trade Brandon Nimmo for Andrew McCutchen or Josh Harrison? Why wouldn’t Sandy want two former all stars? “We’re trading from a position of strength” Or is it? In this article, I’ll make sense of it all.

YOUTH

I think most of us can agree that the Mets as a team need to get younger. Last season the Mets had 7 opening day starters that were over the age of 30. The only players that were under 30 we’re Travis d’Arnaud and Noah Syndergaard. That makes 7 of 8 position over the age of 30. Brandon Nimmo is 24 years old. This year, that number should decrease, assuming Amed Rosario and Juan Lagares start at SS and CF respectively, but clearly this team lacks youth, and adding Andrew McCutchen(although he is still a solid player) adds another guy that is on the wrong side of 30.

TEAM CONTROL

Team control probably played a huge role in why the Mets kept Nimmo. 2018 marks the final season of Andrew McCutchen’s six year 51.5 million dollar contract.  Meanwhile, the Mets still have Brandon Nimmo under team control for five more seasons. Although the Mets are still trying to contend(or so they say) they also need to consider the future of this team, trading five years of Nimmo for one year of Cutch risks the teams future.

LACK OF OUTFIELD DEPTH

As of right now the Mets have four outfielders that are healthy. Yoenis Cespedes, Jay Bruce, Juan Lagares and Brandon Nimmo. Michael Conforto is still rehabbing his injured shoulder. This is a very thin outfield especially when you consider the Mets have no MLB ready outfielders in triple A and the fact that Juan Lagares and Yoenis Cespedes have each spent significant time on the DL the past two seasons. Trading Nimmo for Pirates second baseman Josh Harrison would hurt our outfield depth even further. Even trading Nimmo for Cutch wouldn’t fix this and we’d lose Nimmo’s five years of control.

VALUE

If the Mets wanted to trade Brandon Nimmo, this offseason wouldn’t be the right time to do so. Brandon has yet to play a full season in the big leagues. Teams haven’t been able to see what he can do for a full season, although they saw a short glimpse of it in the second half of the 2017 season, that’s probably still not enough for teams to truly see what he can do. Letting Nimmo show his skills for a full season can truly give teams what he can do and the Mets could potentially get more for him down the road if they were to trade him.

MONEY

What’s a Mets article without mentioning money? Money has been the number one topic of conversation for the Mets organization for the past 6 years. This was probably the number one reason why the Mets didn’t trade Nimmo for Cutch or Harrison. Nimmo will make significantly less money this year than both Cutch and Harrison. In 2017 Nimmo made 536,240 dollars, he will make probably slightly more than that in 2018, meanwhile Andrew McCutchen will make 14,750,000 dollars in 2018 and Josh Harrison will make 10,250,000 dollars. Trading for either one of Cutch or Harrison will probably reach the Mets budget and Sandy will be unable to fill other needs like another reliever and a starter.

CONCLUSION

In Conclusion, keeping Brandon Nimmo was a smart move by Sandy Alderson. He’s young, controlled for the next five seasons, probably can increase his trade value next season, is very cheap and provides OF depth in case an outfielder gets hurt. If you’ve made it this far in this article I just want to say thank you for reading and hopefully you read more content we have on 90percentmets(cheap plug I know lol). LGM!