Mets' Brandon Nimmo gets a handle on neck issues, has learned to see big picture
Mets' Brandon Nimmo missed much of last season with bulging discs in his neck but found his swing in September, slashing .261/.430/.565. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — The play that changed the way Brandon Nimmo views baseball and appropriate effort level came April 14. It was a Sunday night in Atlanta, in the fourth inning of a rare mediocre Jacob deGrom start in an eventual Mets loss, when Ozzie Albies smacked a long fly ball to deep centerfield.
With a long sprint, an outstretched glove and a crash into the wall, Nimmo made the catch. He wishes he hadn’t tried.
“That catch was great,” Nimmo said Friday afternoon. “But it would’ve been better to play for three months than to make that one catch.”
Nimmo’s collision with the wall triggered two bulging discs in his neck, shaping many of his baseball and life decisions since — including spending most of his winter in Port St. Lucie, working out at the Mets’ spring training facility in an environment more hospitable to baseball than the cold of New York City or his Wyoming hometown.
As a new season dawns, Nimmo carries with him a lesson from that crash and a mostly lost 2019: Try not to run into walls. He said he is allowed to “play freely,” but he will need to manage his neck and those discs for at least the rest of his baseball career.
“It’s something I’ll have the rest of my life, which is fine,” Nimmo said. “Day-to-day life is fine. For the baseball field, I gotta do my rehab, do my strengthening, do my mobility exercises.
“I’m still going to go out there and play as hard as I can, but there’s playing smart and playing hard. There’s a little bit of a difference.”
New York Mets' Brandon Nimmo runs along the first base line on his two-run triple against the Los Angeles Dodgers during the second inning of an MLB baseball game at Citi Field on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2019. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Part of that management is a 20-minute series of neck stabilizing and strengthening exercises he incorporated into his pregame/pre-workout routine.
“From what I understood, most people as you go through life end up having these things [bulging discs],” Nimmo said. “Unfortunately for me, part of my job description was I need to run as fast I can that way while looking back [the opposite] way.
“Going through normal life, it doesn’t bother me too much. But you put it through the stresses of basically trying to fire on it 100% all the time, same with the swings, it all adds up. There’s a few things I have to do in order to keep that at bay.”
Heading into 2020, Nimmo is slated to be the Mets’ everyday centerfielder — nobody has told him to get work in at the corner spots, so he hasn’t, he said — and probably their regular leadoff hitter. Despite a slow start last year, he has a .395 OBP the past two seasons, sixth among 200 big-leaguers with as many plate appearances.
Upon returning from his three-month-plus stint on the injured list last season, and with a little help from a leg kick suggested by hitting coach Chili Davis, Nimmo crushed it in September: .261 average, .430 OBP, .565 slugging percentage.
He proved to himself — and the Mets — that he still can be the player he was during his breakout 2018.
“Being able to have the September that I had and being able to help produce and show that hey, when I’m healthy, I’m the same guy as I was — that was big for me and that was big for the team,” Nimmo said. “It’s better for me to be on the field than on the bench. That’s the great takeaway from that injury.”
