Marcus Semien Must Undertake Late-Career Evolution To Salvage His Mets Tenure

[Cade Lalim]

Image courtesy of © Neville E. Guard-Imagn Images

An offseason trade that came out of nowhere this winter has not looked good on the New York Mets' behalf thus far. Back in November, the Mets and Rangers came together on a swap that sent Marcus Semien to New York while sending Brandon Nimmo and cash considerations back to Texas.

Nimmo has been off to a great start with the Rangers, but Semien hasn’t really gotten things going yet offensively. Through 17 games this season, Semien is only batting .188/.243/.266 with .508 OPS and a 47 wRC+. In a one-week stretch from April 7-14, went 3-for-29. The only positive is that he only struck out three times in that stretch, but he didn't draw a single walk.

We’ve seen Semien start to decline in production dating back to the 2024 season. He’s a career .253 hitter and usually is capable of hitting at least 20 home runs per season or more; he hit a career high 45 back in 2021 with the Toronto Blue Jays. Including this year, though, his OPS hasn’t surpassed .700 in three consecutive campaigns.

What's Plaguing Marcus Semien At the Plate?

Batted-Ball and Contact Quality 

Semien has been hitting a lot more balls in the air compared to previous years. He's only hitting 23.5% of his balls in play on the ground, a huge improvement over his career 36.8% rate. This is as result of him topping a lot less balls; on average, Semien tops 26.2% of his contact, but that number has fallen to 11.8% early in 2026. 

It's also interesting to note that when Semien's topped% was higher, it resulted in less weak contact, averaging 3.4% for his career. This year, when he’s cut his topped% by more than half, it’s led to him making weak contact at a 9.8% rate. That's by far his highest in the majors, and more than double than the MLB average mark of 4%.

There is an advantage to this situation. Even though Semien is making way more weak contact, with him reducing his topped rate, it’s causing a rise in solid contact. He’s sitting at a 12.2% mark where he’s sat at 6.9% for his career.

That may sound oxymoronic, but let's dig a bit deeper to understand. Since squared-up rate was introduced to Statcast back in 2023, Semien’s 35.0% squared-up rate is the highest it’s been since being introduced. This comes from him just making a lot of solid contact; not getting on top, but also not barreling the baseball as much. This also explains why his average exit velocity is down nearly two mph from last year.

In essence, he's traded some of his hard contact for a much wider dispersion of weak and solid contact. That may not be the best path to head down, but it does give us a basis to understand what's causing the downturn in his numbers.

Plate Discipline 

Semien has always been known to take a "professional" at-bat. He’ll take his walks at an average rate and keeps his strikeout percentage better than average. For his career, Semien has swung at pitches in the zone 49.6% of the time, just a tad over the league average 48.8%. This year it’s been the highest since his debut season in 2014 at 51.6%.

Nothing really has dramatically changed in this sector of his play other than his chase rate. It’s is up to 28.4% this year, whereas it sat at 23.4% last year; this is a huge contributing factor to his 20.0 strikeout percentage which is the highest it’s been since 2021 when it was 20.2%. We know that as players age, their bat speed tends to slow down, leading to more whiffs and strikeouts.

That decline in swing speed is likely our missing link. There’s two more key metrics that have seen a dip in recent seasons, not just this year. While his chase rate has been climbing, the contact he’s been making when he chases out of the zone has seen a steady decline. It’s been up to 62.5% in his career, but currently sits at 50%, the same mark as last season.

Can the Mets Unlock A New Version of Marcus Semien?

It’s still very early in the year, but maybe Semien will have a different type of offensive season this year. He’s always had pretty good power considering his bat speed has always been pretty minimal, which should hopefully mitigate some of the earlier issues we discussed with whiffing and chasing.

With Semien in the back half of his career (he's 35), he could lean into his newfound contact trends and try to turn into Luis Arraez-type hitter who just slaps singles around. They have very similar tendencies at the plate being contact hitters with minimal bat speed, while also showing good plate discipline.

That's probably an unfair comparison for someone with 254 career home runs under their belt, but what Semien is doing right now isn't working. A late-career renaissance is on the table, but only if he leans into the above-average skills he still possesses.

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