PHILADELPHIA — Brandon Nimmo waited near the vistitor’s clubhouse entrance at Citizens Bank Park so he could immediately greet his teammates as they arrived on the bus Sunday.
After three-plus months removed from the scene, Nimmo was finally an active player for the team again, following a neck injury and lengthy rehab throughout the summer. And he was eager to surprise his teammates, some of whom he says were unware he was rejoining the club.
“I wasn’t sure that this point would happen during the season, and I am so glad that it has,” Nimmo said before the Mets faced the Phillies. “After that first [rehab] stint you are starting to wonder, ‘Am I going to come back this year without pain?’ To be back without pain and the full range of motion, I am excited about it.”
Nimmo said he sustained the injury crashing into the outfield fence in Atlanta on April 15. He tried playing through the discomfort for more than a month, before he was placed on the injured list, diagnosed with a bulging disk in the neck. Then came a minor league rehab assignment that was terminated because of further discomfort. Nimmo was shut down from baseball activities into mid-July and spent the last six weeks building up and playing rehab games.
“At the [start] I don’t think we really knew what we were dealing with and I think the first kneejerk reaction was it was muscular and I was with them on that,” Nimmo said. “When we went to the second opinion doctor he said we did it right the first go-around. It’s just the second go-around you can’t do the same thing again, you have to give it that month, so it’s unfortunate the way it worked out I had to miss so much time when you feel like you could have done that in the beginning, but I honestly don’t think we could have handled it a different way.”
Now manager Mickey Callaway will attempt to integrate Nimmo into an outfield rotation that lately has included J.D. Davis, Michael Conforto, Jeff McNeil and Juan Lagares.
“You love the way [Nimmo] plays and he’s going to grind out at-bats, see some pitches, so having him available off the bench or in the starting lineup is really going to help us,” Callaway said. “He’s a little bit different hitter than a lot of the hitters that we have, so you’re giving a little bit of a different look.
“We have a lot of hitters in our lineup that are going to go out there and attack early and Nimmo is a little bit different. He’s going to see more pitches, he is a little bit more like [Joe] Panik, so the days we have he and Panik in the lineup, maybe you can run some pitch counts up that you otherwise wouldn’t.”
Nimmo was available off the bench against the Phillies, and Callaway indicated he will likely start in the outfield Monday in Washington.
In 43 games this season, Nimmo was slashing .200/.344/.323 with three homers and 14 RBIs, entering play. Nimmo suspects the neck discomfort factored into slow start.
“Your neck is pretty important to what you do with the swing,” Nimmo said. “But I take responsibility for what I did at the beginning of the year and I’m just hoping after being healthy now and making some adjustments I’ll be able to put in the work, and that is what I’m excited about, that I will be able to put in the work that I need to make the adjustments to the game. I felt like toward the end there I wasn’t able to put in the work I needed to make the adjustments to the game.”
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