Jacob deGrom Leads Mets’ Off-Season Shopping List

Eppler said the Mets told center fielder Brandon Nimmo, like deGrom a homegrown standout who is a free agent, that they would like to keep him. Boras, also the agent for Nimmo and Walker, had colorful ways of describing the demand for both players.

For Nimmo, Boras used movie allusions (including a questionable pun): “There are a lot of teams in the free-agent market that are in the waters for a center fielder. Whoever Pixar guy will be the lucky one to be finding Nimmo.”

For Walker, Boras turned to a geographical play on words: “He’s one of the few players that’s under 30 and he’s had multiple 150-inning-pitched seasons. So essentially, Taijuan is on an island. And I think the only question is who is willing Taipei?”

Free agency doesn’t officially begin until Thursday, but teams are free to negotiate with their current players beforehand. Eppler said he didn’t know how soon deGrom wanted to sign, but said the Mets would also do their due diligence on other options in the meantime.

“That’s part of the communication from our side to them — and to everybody — is that we’ve got business to do,” he said. “There are players we want to acquire and things we want to accomplish this winter time, so we’re going to get down to it.”

He added later: “We want to stay in communication with each other and be very transparent with each other, so they’ll feel like we have a sense for what we’re doing and hopefully we have a sense of what they’re doing. And we’ll see what happens.”

Inside Pitch

The San Francisco Giants and superstar outfielder Aaron Judge, who spent seven seasons with the Yankees but is now a free agent for the first time in his career, have been linked for obvious reasons. Judge grew up less than two hours away from San Francisco in Northern California, attended Giants games as a kid and watched Barry Bonds. And the Giants are a big-market team that missed the playoffs in 2022, were below average offensively and have relatively little committed to their 2023 payroll.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/sports/baseball/jacob-degrom-mets-offseason.html