Omar Infante made available by Royals

According to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, the Royals are making second baseman Omar Infante available.

Infante, who turns 33 later this month, hit .252/.295/.337 in 135 games played for the Royals this past season.

Infante is under contract through 2017, and is owed a total of $25.2 million, which includes a $2 million buyout in 2018.

For his career, Infante has hit .276/.319/.395 while averaging 10 home runs per season.

The last time Infante played shortstop was 2010, when he appeared in 19 games there for the Braves.

Since 2010, Infante has been playing primarily second base, where he has been a plus defender every season since 2014.

Thoughts:

If the Mets were in need of a second baseman, Infante would be an interesting name. However, with the Mets’ major need being a shortstop upgrade and Infante having not played a single inning there since 2010, I don’t see why the Mets would have any interest in him.

According to reports, the Mets are only likely to deal Daniel Murphy if they upgrade at shortstop. If that were to materialize, the Mets could slide Wilmer Flores over to second base in place of Murphy or go with Dilson Herrera, who jumped from Double-A to the Mets late last season and impressed in a small sample size.

Moreover, if the Mets had interest in spending between $8 million and $10 million on a second baseman for the next three seasons, it would make much more sense for them to simply re-sign Murphy – who is four years younger than Infante – after the 2015 season.