Apparently someone at MLB headquarters turned the stove on and accidentally left it going. On Sunday, ESPN's Jeff Passan reported that the Texas Rangers and New York Mets were finalizing a straight-up player swap of Marcus Semien for Brandon Nimmo. Semien will be taking his defensive talents to New York City, and Nimmo will be taking his whole sprinting-to-first-base-on-a-walk deal to the AL West. This trade is also of the unc-for-unc variety, and carries the contract implications that come with such maneuvers. Semien is 35 years old and is owed $72 million over the next three years; Nimmo will turn 33 the day before the Rangers' first game of 2026, and is owed $101.25 million over the next five years, which carries marginally less average annual value than Semien. Here is another characteristic of this sort of trade with older players: Name recognition aside, unless the players involved are bonafide All Stars, the margins tend toward minutiae. As the Rangers are laden with expensive contracts, four-ish million dollars a year can play a factor in a trade between a defensively valuable second-baseman and a slightly younger and a slightly more offensively productive corner outfielder. Personally—and this is just my opinion—I would take the older infielder who does not have the habit of sprinting to first base on a walk.