The Mets have so many decisions awaiting them in the coming weeks. The one that will attract the most attention is Jacob deGrom, certain to opt out and seek a deal — somewhere — that’ll pay him north of $40 million a year. DeGrom has been an essential Met for nine years. It is an issue that will take some soul searching — and should.

But deGrom isn’t the player the Mets should focus their immediate energies on.

Brandon Nimmo is.

At 29, Nimmo proved in 2022 that not only is he a plus-center fielder/leadoff man — his 5.0 WAR was higher than, among others, Pete Alonso, Starling Marte and Edwin Diaz — but that he can stay upright for a whole season. His 151 games played was a career high, and only the second time he’s played as many as 100.

Nimmo is a bedrock piece of the Mets’ DNA. Now, maybe what happened against the Padres and the Braves is still raw enough that you think the Mets’ roster should be vaporized, but the fact remains it won 101 games. This was a good team that played its worst at the worst possible time. It happens. There are no do-overs for that.

But unless the Mets are planning a full rebuild — which is unlikely for as long as Steve Cohen tops the organizational flow chart — then the Mets won’t — and shouldn’t — change their essence. Nimmo was the offense’s engine when the team was humming along for the season’s first five months. Removing that will come at a cost.

Of course, so will retaining him. Scott Boras is, after all his agent.

“We’re looking at being a part of a winning culture,” Nimmo said after the Mets were eliminated Sunday, “and I think that’s something that Steve has done really, really well here. There’s definitely some factor that will play into that as far as how I’ve been treated while I’ve been here, the chances they took on me in the draft. It’s all I’ve really known.”

A year ago, the Mets chose a qualifying offer over committing to another of their recent drafted-and-developed products, Michael Conforto (also a Boras client) and while that decision proved prescient when Conforto hurt himself during the lockout, Conforto’s time as a Met was mostly spent on spec: they kept waiting for him to become something (a batting champion? A perennial MVP candidate?) that he never became.

Nimmo is different. Everything about Nimmo’s time as a Met, since being drafted out of Wyoming (and a high school that didn’t have a baseball team) as the 13th pick of the 2011 draft, had felt like an outlier. The Mets knew they had to be patient with him, and were. Conforto was always viewed as the brighter prospect.

But Nimmo became the better player. And there are a lot of teams with deep pockets that will certainly be intrigued, starting with the Red Sox and Phillies, and why wouldn’t the Rockies, the team Nimmo grew up rooting for, make an inquiry? There will be suitors.

But those teams are the Great Lakes compared to Cohen, whose pockets are as deep as the Atlantic. The name of the agent tells you this will not be a hometown discount. But the skills of the player say the Mets should be aggressive in their negotiating.

Now, sure: there is a fantasy out there, the Mets offering a kajillion dollars at the other outfield free-agent-to-be in town, a fellow named Aaron Judge.

Mets fans who have suffered not only through the Wilpon Era of Austerity (and also remember a time when Lorinda de Roulet and her daughters ran the team on such a shoestring that they wondered why foul balls couldn’t be retrieved from the stands and reused) have long held a wish in their hearts:

Just once, let’s outbid the Yankees for a player they really want.

(It’s actually quite amazing that other than maybe David Cone in 1996, the two teams have never gone head-to-head for a high-impact free agent.)

Judge is a better player than Nimmo. But is he four times the player? That’s probably what it would cost, thereabouts, which means that unless Cohen truly doesn’t care even an ounce about payroll it will hurt the team’s long-term development to bag that elephant.

Nimmo won’t come cheap. But he shouldn’t come cheap. He won’t turn 30 until March. His best years ought to be right in front of him. The Mets have already invested 11 years in him. His story isn’t done here. Not yet.