The Mets know all about deferred money. Every July 1, Bobby Bonilla gets his check - $1.19 million from a contract that keeps paying through 2035 - and the whole thing has turned into one of baseball’s most famous punchlines. Bonilla hasn’t played for the Mets since 1999 and hasn’t appeared in a major league game since 2001, but the annual payment lives on as a reminder of how far teams will go to move money into the future.
If the Mets ever wanted to play that game again, Marcus Semien would be the obvious name to circle, even if only in a hypothetical sense. Right now, there’s a strong case that the club would be better off pushing that bill down the road than keeping him on the field.
Semien is expected to be out until at least August after the latest report said his hip injury will sideline him for 4-6 weeks. Once you add a rehab assignment and the possibility of extra playing time for trade candidates, there’s little reason to rush back a 35-year-old who has struggled badly.
The numbers tell the story. Semien is batting .214 and already has 6 errors, which is a big jump from the 2 he committed all of last season.
He has been taking heat from fans all year, and the pressure was always going to be intense because of how he got here. The Mets swapped fan favorite Brandon Nimmo for Semien, so the bar was never going to be low.
At a minimum, Semien needed to deliver Gold Glove-caliber defense. Offensively, something like .230 with 20 home runs would have been acceptable.
He wasn’t on track to reach that before the injury.
Money is the other part of the equation. Semien is owed $46 million over the next two seasons, with a luxury tax hit of $24 million in each season.
That’s a steep price for a player the Mets brought in as part of a move designed to save money later on. The whole point of dealing Nimmo, who had 5 years left, for Semien, who had 3 years left, was to trim future payroll pain.
The idea was to absorb the hit now in exchange for relief starting with the 2029 season. So far, that plan has not exactly gone smoothly.
The Mets have already dealt with plenty of bad money on the books this year. Sean Manaea only recently started to look like he had things figured out.
Kodai Senga could be one bad outing away from having his locker cleaned out for good. And there’s even uncertainty around Jorge Polanco, if only because there isn’t complete confidence he’s even on the Mets.
Under Steve Cohen, the club has never been shy about paying players to leave. The trades of Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer were seen as wins by most fans because they improved the return.
Robinson Cano and Omar Narvaez were cut loose with major money still owed. James McCann and Jeff McNeil had parts of their contracts paid.
A long list of other deals has turned into dead money on the payroll since Cohen took over.
So no, the Mets probably aren’t about to create a new Bobby Bonilla Day with Semien. But if you forced the question, he’s the name that fits best.
In Other News...
Mets Make Another Desperate Upside Bet As Deadline Pressure Builds
With the trade deadline closing in, the Mets have added another name to the organizational mix, signing Christopher Morel to a minor-league deal and sending him to Triple-A Syracuse. It is the sort of low-cost move clubs make when they are trying to keep as many paths open as possible, especially for a player whose tools have long made evaluators dream a little bigger than the risk profile might suggest.
Morel brings real power upside, with 42 homers in his first 220 career games and a 26-homer season in 2023, but the swing-and-miss issues are just as much a part of the package. He struck out 38.4% of the time with the Marlins this year and carries a 30.7% career strikeout rate, so the Mets are betting on raw impact more than reliability as they look for any extra edge before the deadline arrives. [Read more 🡒]
This Forgotten 1986 Mets Trade Has One Of The Strangest Twists
The 1986 Mets made plenty of headline-grabbing moves on their way to a championship, but some of the quieter deals have become strange footnotes in hindsight. One of them came on June 30, when New York sent Ed Lynch to the Cubs and got Dave Liddell and Dave Lenderman back, a swap that barely registered at the time but still sits inside the teams most memorable season.
Lynch had appeared in just one game for the Mets that year before moving on, yet he is still counted as part of that World Series club. The return ended up carrying its own odd wrinkle a few years later, when Liddell surfaced again in Mets history in a way few would have predicted, leaving this old trade as one of those roster moves that feels more like a trivia question than a transaction. [Read more 🡒]
Mets Suddenly Have A Tough Outfield Call They Cant Ignore
Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing have given the Mets something they badly needed in a season full of uneven stretches: two rookies who look like they belong. Benge has been one of the more productive first-year hitters in the majors, while Ewing has paired steady offense with reliable defense in the outfield, giving New York a pair of young players who have handled the jump to big league pitching and the everyday grind without looking overwhelmed.
The timing, though, is what makes this such a tricky development for the Mets. Benge settled in after an early adjustment period and has been consistently productive since, while Ewing has kept stacking useful at-bats and innings in the field, but the organization is also moving toward a point where there may not be enough room to keep both rookies in the mix every day. For a club trying to sort out its future while still chasing results now, that kind of decision is becoming harder to postpone. [Read more 🡒]