SAN FRANCISCO — It all stemmed from a snub.
In 2025, Brandon Nimmo has gradually improved his numbers each month of the season and is currently riding a streak of 18 straight games reaching base, the sixth-longest of his career. The left fielder has hit up and down the lineup, recently returning the leadoff spot where he made his career, and against left-handed pitching, Nimmo is hitting .265 with a .787, with his OPS ranking as the seventh-best in baseball against southpaws.
The key to unlocking a nearly slump-proof Nimmo is simply consistency. And health, that too. But to get to this point, he had to drop his pursuit of perfection at the plate and get back to what made him good in the first place.
“Last year, he had a great first half and then he came back and had a couple bad games, then just started tweaking things and trying to change things,” Mets hitting coach Jeremy Barnes told the Daily News on Saturday at Oracle Park. “He was chasing perfection, for lack of a better term. You end up getting lost when you’re doing that kind of stuff.”
Nimmo thought he was deserving of a spot on the NL All-Star team last year after hitting .248 with an .815 OPS and 16 home runs over the first half. It was the second straight season in which he felt he was deserving and posted numbers similar to others who were selected, yet failed to make the team.
It got to him.
“When I didn’t make the All-Star Game, I felt like, ‘OK, then I’m not good enough. I need to do more,’” Nimmo said.”That got me in trouble. I wasn’t being myself there for a few weeks, and that kind of tail spun.”
Small tweaks and adjustments are common throughout the season, but Nimmo started making such drastic adjustments to his mechanics that he overcorrected, creating more issues he had to fix. The pendulum was swinging too far from one direction to the next.
He was concerned about nearly everything in his swing. His hand placement, how he should use his hands, how he was loading and how he was using his legs.
By the time he was able to correct the issues, the plantar fasciitis in his foot flared up. While the corrections and overcorrections were something he could control, the injury wasn’t.
“That was the biggest challenge,” Barnes said. “Once we were trying to get him back, then we were also dealing with an injury.”
He finished the season hitting just .190 with a .595 OPS. He was on the upswing by the time the Mets made the postseason and produced through the Wild Card and NLDS rounds, but the plantar fasciitis hindered him against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS, and the injury lingered through the winter.
Barnes had a long conversation with the left fielder during the offseason where they mapped out a simple goal of staying true to the concepts and processes that had always made him successful. The mechanics required to hit baseballs are developed through repetition of the same movements over and over again. Steadiness and uniformity have to be there.
Flexibility in approach has to be there as well. Adjustments have to be made as the season goes on and pitchers adjust to certain hitters. But it’s easier to get back to what works when the changes aren’t so drastic that his swing becomes completely different.
“When we are consistent, if things get off, we can get him back pretty quick,” Barnes said. “But when we go look at the information and there’s like, 72 different types of swings, it’s hard to really dial into it. So, that’s the biggest thing. He’s just been highly consistent with his work, and the changes he’s made have been small and impactful, as opposed to big, massive shifts.”
Now 32 with nearly 10 years of big league experience, Nimmo is still waiting for that first All-Star selection. But if it doesn’t come, he’s not going to work himself into a funk or work his swing into something it’s not.
“I’m going to trust the process,” Nimmo said. “I’m not going to be successful all the time, but that’s OK.If I do the little things right on a daily basis, I should be okay in the long run.”
NOTES
The Mets have not yet activated Gregory Soto, the left-hander acquired in a trade from the Baltimore Orioles on Friday. The Orioles were at home at the time of the trade so he had to travel across the country, but the Mets expect him to arrive Saturday night.
Right-hander Tylor Megill (shoulder impingement) threw a bullpen Thursday, and will throw another Sunday. Manager Carlos Mendoza said he’s “moving in the right direction,” but the Mets have not yet put a timeline on a return.
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